[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to PTC point of view, brought to you by preferred trust Company, the preferred custodian for all alternative investments. We're here to provide retirement savers like you with the tools you need to succeed. Need a confidence boost when it comes to investing outside of the stock market? Do you want the power to build a tax sheltered nest egg that will last through your golden years? You've come to the right place. Turn up your speakers and turn off cruise control, because we're taking you on the alternate route to investing with your IRA.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of PTC Point of View. Today in the studio, I have Chris Trembley, director of operations, here with me.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Good morning, Maddie. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: So if you're a client of ours, you may know that we just did our annual client review. So our clients are able to go in there, answer some questions, give us some feedback, give us suggestions on what we can do better here at preferred trust company to make their experience more smooth and more positive. So we thought today we would come on the podcast and kind of address some of those comments and talk about account maintenance and keeping your account up to date and compliant and kind of addressing some of those suggestions and questions that clients sent us. So first of all, let's get into fees.
Why do we have fees?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Why do we have fees?
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Some clients are a little confused on why do we have a minimum account balance? Why is there an annual IRA admin fee and what do these cover? So let's talk about that a little bit.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Okay, let's do it. So minimum balance requirement not considered a fee. So that's separate.
It's all disclosed on our fee schedule when you do first open your account. So they are two separate things that are required to keep your account compliant. So let's touch on, I think, fees first. So, you know, obviously to open an account, there's work that goes behind every, everything that happens from the time that you complete your application and we receive it through your first investment, all the way through, if you decide to close your account and transfer it somewhere else, and everything that happens in between. So every transaction that occurs within your IRA for your IRA has a related fee to it.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: We don't work for free.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: We don't work. That is true. I know we don't work for free. It's funny how some people think we do, though.
It's not a free service. It obviously is a service. Preferred trust company doesn't sell anything. We don't sell products. We don't sell. We sell a service. We are an IRA custodian. So you have to have, if you want to keep your retirement account qualified and keep it in good standing with the IR's, you have to have a custodian around that account, and that's us. And so we have fees for the work that we do. And unlike your typical, like if you're looking at your account that you have at, say, TD Ameritrade or Edward Jones or any traditional big box custodian, they make money off of the investments that you make. That's what they do, that's what they're licensed to do. That's how they make their money. Preferred trust company or self directed custodians, those specializing in alternative investments, we actually do not make any money off of the investments that you make. We can't, we are not licensed to sell anything. Therefore, we cannot make money off of your investments. So what we make money off of and how, how we, we gain our income is off of the transactions. So you may make an investment, let's say maybe you purchase some precious metals or some digital currency. We cannot charge you a percentage of that investment or the sale of that investment.
We have to get a fee for actually processing the purchase or the sale of that investment. So our fees are based around the transactions that we process. So, for instance, when you open an account with us, the account establishment fee, everything that we do to get your account open and funded is going to be $50. So our fee schedule, everything is 100% disclosed on our fee schedule fee schedule, which can be found on our website. We're completely transparent. There are no hidden fees anywhere. It's straightforward. So everything that you do has a related fee. Now, the annual account administration fee is inclusive of various transactions, and that is based on the value of your account, all assets and cash inclusive.
So that particular fee covers everything from preferred trust company providing clients with online account access, meaning you can see your account through our online portal 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can review all of your transactions. You can download your tax documents, you can download your statements, you can see your holdings, all of that. So that online portal, that's part of the IRA account administration fee. We every year report to the IR's and produce tax documents for every IRA account. So every IRA account that's open at the end of the year gets a tax form 5498. If you've had any distributions throughout the year, you get form 1099 r. All of those. That fee that you're paying for the annual administration fee includes our time to produce those tax documents, send them to the IR's, make any corrections you might have, provide a copy to you. The same goes with our annual account statement packages. We upload those to the portal for you. It also covers any distributions or contributions that you might make or have from the accounts. If you're taking monthly distributions from the earned income you're making off of your investments, that's inclusive. If you're making annual contributions, or maybe you have a recurring contribution. A lot of people do recurring contributions these days. A monthly deduction from their checking or their savings account that's included in there. So all those little ancillary things are included in that IRA administration fee that we charge.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: There's work that goes into everything.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: There's work that goes into everything. Yeah, I think a lot of people just think, oh, it's just a push of a button. And oddly enough, that's not exactly true. And there is cost to technology that goes into building better systems as well. That is one of the things that we're most proud of is that we do have those systems built in. And hey, let's say that you don't want to go online to download your tax documents and you need a copy mailed to you. We'll do that, too. So all those little things, that's a manual process that we use. So everything has a fee.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: So I know you mentioned precious metals.
One of the questions we've been getting lately is about depository fees.
What are they and why? Let's talk about that quickly.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: So when you have precious metals held in your IRA, you have to have a depository that actually physically holds and stores the metals. Right. So preferred trust company is not a depository. We don't have a big vault in the basement of our, of our building where the metals are held. They're actually companies depositories. That that's what they specialize in. That's what they do. They store the metals and the security around those metals and everything that goes in to ensuring that those metals cannot be taken out of possession of the depository. So there's a fee for that. There's an annual fee to have your metals stored. So a lot of people don't understand that there's multiple parts to precious metals transaction. You have your IRA custodian that's going to hold custody of your IRA inclusive of those metals. You're going to have a precious metals dealer that's going to actually sell the metals to your IRA, and then you're going to have the depository, which is going to store the metals once they're purchased through your IRA. So it's this three prong approach. And so the depository does assess the IRA an annual fee for their storage services. And the IRA needs to. We pay that from the IRA every year to. And it's a pass through fee. The IRA is invoiced directly from the depository. Preferred trust company doesn't make any money off of that depository fee. We simply process the payment from your IRA to the depository so that they can continue storing your metals for you.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: And the depository fee depends on how much you have in the depository, right?
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Yes. There are different angles at how a depository assesses their fees. So you've got, does the depository offer segregated storage versus non segregated? Meaning are your metals commingled with other clients metals, or are they segregated all by themselves? Some depositories don't have commingled storage. Some of them only have segregated storage. So fees vary between whether it's commingled or not. Fees also vary dependent on the type of metal you're storing. Silver, gold, platinum, palladium, a lot of them depends on the value of the metals, how much the fee is. Some of them are flat fee based. It really depends on the depository you select. The fee may increase, too. If the values of your metals increase, the fee is going to increase. The fee could increase. That's possible, depending on which depository you select. So we always encourage clients when they're going to make a purchase of precious metals, when they're deciding on the depository, that they really do their due diligence, not only on the fee end, but you can kind of look at the security surrounding that depository. Are they licensed? All of those type of things. It's important you look at that so that when you make a decision, you're well educated about which depository you're going to select.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Aren't we working with two?
[00:10:05] Speaker C: We are. We work with Delaware depository, DDSC.
We have clients storing actually in Delaware, at their location in Delaware, and then right here in our home state of Nevada, in Boulder City, they have a location as well. And then we also allow storage at IDS International depository services. They have a location, typically, most people, when they're storing with ids, store at their Texas location.
And then we have the Cayman Islands SWP, where you can store outside of the United States in the Cayman Islands, and the beautiful Cayman Islands in the beautiful Cayman Islands. So if you want to go take a vacation to audit your precious metals, that'd be nice. You could go down to the Cayman.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: I heard you're taking a trip to the one in Vegas today.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Where is it? Boulder City.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: Boulder City. Boulder City. So just right outside of Vegas, we're.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Gonna go check out the 30 minutes.
[00:10:59] Speaker C: Gonna go look at the vault, go see their facilities. That's their actual newest facility. A couple. Just a couple years old. Not too old at all. So we're gonna go check that out, take a look at it, do some auditing.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Exciting.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: An interesting afternoon, for sure.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Take some pictures with some gold bars. Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: I know.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: I was trying to come with so I could make some TikTok videos in the vault, but they said no to me.
[00:11:24] Speaker C: That's what's really great about these depositories. You know, it's like Fort Knox. Like, if you want to go in, you know, we have to give them our vehicle, make, model, color, license plate number, firstborn. No, our driver's license information, all of that information, because they really do a whole security check when you go in there, and they only allow a certain amount of people in there at a certain time. And they're very structured. You know, you'll have an escort the whole time. So, I mean, there's hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in precious metals sitting in their vault. So you can imagine the security around that.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Yeah, they don't want to let little old me in.
She's not allowed. Okay, let's move on to the minimum balance requirement. I know we brought that up earlier. That is different than a fee. Why do we require this?
[00:12:12] Speaker C: So, most banks or most financial institutions have some kind of minimum that you have to maintain in the account to keep it open. Ours is 500, and so that cash balance actually sits in a money market account, just segregated alongside with. Alongside your other cash. And if you have investments in your account and it's there to protect the integrity of the account, should preferred trust company have to resign as custodian or transfer out the assets in any way, it goes partially to pay for any termination fees, but if you're transferring your account somewhere else or you're personally electing to close the account, that $500 cash gets put infused right back into your normal cash balance, and you get that back. It's not a fee that we assess.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: So they do get it back. Unless it has to be used for.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: Correct. Unless there's zero cash in the account upon closure.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Okay, that makes sense. Hopefully, that answers our clients questions about that.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: And if not, they can always call. We're happy. Client service agents are happy to assist and answer any specifics, and get really granular with you if you want to. You can just always call our toll free number and reach out to one of our agents and we're happy to assist you through any questions you might have regarding our fees or the minimum balance requirement.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: So that actually leads me into my next topic. There was a lot of comments saying that people didn't know who their account manager at PTC was.
Let's talk about why we don't necessarily have account managers, so we want to.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Be able to be trained all the way through from start to finish, all of our employees, all of our agents. So that you're not assigned to one specific person.
Should that person be unavailable to assist you or out of the office for some reason, all of our staff is trained the same way from start to finish. They all can assist in every capacity when it comes to answering questions, from everything from your online account access to your transactions, to taking a distribution, to making an investment. That way we ensure that there's always someone there to assist you, no matter if you're calling at 08:00 a.m. or 05:00 p.m. or middle of the day or leaving us a voice message on the weekend. Always going to be a rep to help you. So you don't have one assigned account manager. Any rep can assist you with any of the questions that you might have regarding your account.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: That way if someone takes a day off, they decide to go to the Cayman Islands.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: That's right, they go visit a vault. That is correct. That way we always ensure that's why we have one general email box which by the way is monitored 24/7 by management to ensure that everybody who sends us an email or everybody that leaves us a voicemail is assisted, that they receive a return call or an email back that is monitored by management. So that general email box, I can assure you, gets all of those emails and voicemails get attended to. So that's why we do that. That way if someone is out of the office, that general email box is always being looked at.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: So if you need to contact us about your account, give us a ring. Any of us can answer those questions for you, correct?
[00:15:39] Speaker C: Or you can send us a quick email if that works better for you. We can email you. Or even if you want to send us an email requesting a call time, there's a specific time that works for you. We'll schedule a time with you that works on your schedule. No problem.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: What email should they be emailing?
[00:15:54] Speaker C: Info info ptcemail.com perfect preferred trust company.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Is hosting an event here very soon. It is called Pillars of Finance. Pillars of Finance is an investment community created by industry experts for investors of all kinds. This year it is taking place virtually on April 4 at 03:00 p.m. if you would like to learn more information, go to Pillarsoff finance.com or click the registration link in the podcast description. And once again, thank you for listening to PTC point of view.
Let's get into some more of the account maintenance questions people have been asking. Can I consolidate my retirement accounts?
[00:16:40] Speaker C: Good question. So, yes. Yes, you absolutely can. There's different angles to look at that. So if you have an account with preferred trust company, and you also have an account with another self directed custodian, you can put those two together. Let's say you have an account at a big box custodian, still at a Wells Fargo or an Edward Jones, somewhere like that. You can transfer funds over to preferred trust company to make it one ira. So you can combine. Now, of course, if you have traditional and Roth, you need to be careful about that. You can't just combine those, the taxes, right, the taxation. So anything going from, you can't go backwards. You can't go from a Roth to a traditional, but you can go from a traditional to a Roth, which is a conversion. So you just have to really look at all of the accounts that you have out there.
What type of account do you have? Are they currently being used? Are you actively investing? Is it sitting there in cash? What is your end goal? To really see if consolidation is the best thing for you. You know, we always try to encourage our clients not put all of their eggs in one basket. You want to diversify your investments for the best outcome for your retirement. So, you know, if you, if you have funds in a big box custodian investing in the stock market, and you have one at preferred trust company investing in alternatives, it may not be in your best interest to combine those accounts. You can't invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds through preferred trust, and you can't invest in alternatives through the big box custodians. So keeping them separate may be, you know, the better idea. So you just want to take a look at all of your accounts and ensure you know what your goals are for your investments and for your retirement. And then we can help you if you want to combine them.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: How long would you say that process is to get that done here at preferred trust company?
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Well, it depends on which way you're going. Are you bringing the money into preferred, or is it going out of preferred. So if you're bringing more money into preferred, it really depends on the, the custodian that's transferring it. So it's up to them. It's at the paperwork we do. You know, you fill out a transfer form with us and we are, as long as the transfer form is in good order, we are submitting it before 48 hours to your transferring custodian. Then it's up to them. They can drag their feet, they can take two weeks, they can take two days. It's really up to them on their time frame of transferring funds. I can tell you for us, if it's an outgoing transfer and we're transferring out to another custodian, the time frame is anywhere from ten to 14 business days for processing.
Once we get the paperwork and that paperwork. If you want to move funds to an IRA outside of preferred trust company, you'll have to reach out to that custodian and fill out paperwork with them. They submit that paperwork to preferred trust company and then we act upon those instructions and that takes about ten to 14 days. Same thing with an account closure. So it really just depends where it's coming from, where it's going, that type of thing.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Things don't happen instantly.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: They don't happen instantly. That's right. There are processes and everything is processed in the order that it's received. We have a high volume of clients doing a high volume of transactions, and so that's why we give that time frame so that we can ensure every client gets helped and assisted and the transactions get taken care of properly.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Speaking of time frame, how often?
Well, clients are asking, how often do I receive a statement of my account?
[00:20:07] Speaker C: So preferred trust company provides annual statement packages and a lot of clients are unsure of why don't we provide monthly or why don't we provide quarterly? And so the online portal that we do provide actually is a daily update of what's going on in your account. You can see transactions, you can scan transactions all the way back to when you opened your account if it was several years ago. So you can see complete transaction history, you can see your holdings. And this is on an ongoing daily basis. So that is why we don't provide monthly statements. You can download and export all of those transactions to an excel file for yourself to kind of maneuver and manipulate them if you want. If you're looking for a certain portion of information, let's say you're looking for just the income you make off of a rental property. You can export all the transactions so that you're just looking at the rental income transactions. So that's why we don't necessarily have monthly statements, technically, but technically you do. You have daily. Basically. Not every investment doesn't garner change either. You know, for instance, if you have investments in precious metals, though, the value changes on a daily basis. Most precious metals don't earn any income or interest or dividends on a monthly basis. Now, if you're investing in something like first trust deed notes through a mortgage broker, those are getting monthly interest payments a little bit different. So it also depends on the type of investment you have as to what changes you are expecting to see in your account. I think that is what's really important is that for account owners, they need to set realistic expectations based on the type of investments that they have and whether or not there will be any income earned versus it just staying until the investment is either more is purchased or sold. So you can see the daily updates on pricing for things like precious metals and digital currency investments right through the portal on a daily basis.
Annual statements are provided at the end of March every year for the previous tax year. So we're getting ready to upload the statements, annual statement packages for 2022 to the portal about two weeks from now. The same information that is going to be in that statement package you can get today by looking at your account online and looking at your transaction history and looking at your holdings and just using the date filter to go back to look for specific transactions you're looking for. But if you're waiting for that annual statement package, it is coming in about two weeks. You will get an email on the evening it's uploaded so that you can then go to the portal and download that statement. Perfect.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Well, keep your eye out if you're listening for your annual statement. Yes.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: Now, full disclosure, we can offer you monthly statements if you want. It just requires you to send an email to our accounting department, excuse me, our accounting department to request it. Just a simple email that says, you know, this is my name, this is my account number I would like to receive and your email where it's going to go to. I would like to receive monthly statement packages. And then every month before the fifth of each month, the statement package for the month prior will be uploaded to your portal. But you do have to request it.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: That's very nice.
[00:23:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: And bringing us to our kind of, our last topic is updating account information. A lot of our clients have some questions on how to change their phone number or their email or their beneficiary, or their address if they moved so how does that process kind of look?
[00:23:52] Speaker C: So one thing clients do have to remember is we are a financial institution, so everything, every change that you want to make on your account must have documentation. It's funny, sometimes when we get to the end of the year and we start preparing tax documents, and clients want to know, well, why didn't I receive mine? Or can you send it? I asked for it to be mailed and I never got it. Oh, well, I never updated my address. If you move, we don't have any way of knowing that unless you tell us. So it's super important. I know that might not be the first thing you think of your IRA custodian when you're going through changes in your life, but it is important that you reach out to preferred trust company so that we can get you the proper paperwork. For example, if you are changing, if you've moved, we have a change of information form where you can fill out a change of your address. And then we just need verification, like a utility bill, a new driver's license, something of that sort. Same thing if you change your name, perhaps you've gotten married, perhaps you've gotten divorced. Same thing. Change of information form and some kind of proof of the change.
Marriage certificate, divorce decree, driver's license, something like that. Beneficiary changes. We have beneficiary documentation so that you can update your beneficiaries if you need to. That's super important. So making sure that you do that. It's always good, I think, to set a reminder, what we encourage our clients to do is set a reminder on your calendar at the end of every year to just reach out to make sure, you know, hey, to say, I just want to make sure everything in my account matches in case maybe you did have a move or a name change or a beneficiary change during the year and you forgot to notify us.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: And all of those forms are on our website right underneath the forms tab, correct. I think under investor relations you can, yes.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: And you can actually go straight from your portal, too.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Oh, cool.
[00:25:47] Speaker C: So if you go into your portal and you're on your accounts page, there's actually a link there for our forms, and you can select on that link and it'll take you right to the page on our website where all of our forms are. And if you're still having trouble with that and you need help with it, just send us an email, give us a quick call. We can email you those forms as well.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, I think that is it for today. We tried to answer a lot of the most popular questions that we got on the client survey. Thank you for joining me today.
[00:26:17] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: And thank you to our listeners for listening to another episode of PTC Point of View.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us for another episode of PTC Point of View, where retirement savers meet alternative investments. Know someone who's struggling with a retirement strategy? Tell them about our show. Can't wait for the next episode. To learn more, visit our
[email protected], or give us a call at 888992. It.
