Sinkie wrote:
Shares in Scb are kept in a seperate nominee accounts with the raffles nominee so don't worry.
Your shares are legally owned by a non-trading subsidiary of your stock broker, known as a nominee company. (Sometimes a third-party company hired by your stock broker will be used instead of a subsidiary – more on this later on.) However, while the nominee company is the legal owner of the shares, you are the beneficial owner, meaning that you have rights over them. Your stock broker will keep records of which client is the beneficial owner of all the shares held by the nominee company, trade your holdings according to your instructions and pass cash from the sale of your shares or from dividends on to you.
Having the shares owned by a non-trading company rather than the main brokerage business means that your assets are legally separate from the assets and liabilities of your stock broker. The segregation between client assets and company assets is crucial to how this arrangement operates.
If the broker goes bust, your stocks are still your property. The creditors can’t touch them. If your investments were just assets of your stock broker and could be claimed by its creditors, you wouldn’t have any security at all.
(Note that this system is very different to placing money on deposit in a bank, where you are technically lending money to the bank to do as it wants and are a creditor of the bank if it fails. Stock brokers hold your assets on custody for you, rather than receiving a loan from you.)
So in theory, segregation ensures your investments are safe.