Interactive Brokers have monthly “inactivity” (aka Monthly Minimum) fee. It is not obvious how one can see this fee being applied. Here is one way (spoiler: through statements).

Introduction

Interactive Brokers have somewhat unusual fee structure (official source), which is always a pain to explain. Basically, they require one to spend at least 10 USD for trading transactions per month. If one spends less, they anyway charge the difference up to 10 USD and call this “inactivity” fee. However, they remove this fee if one has 100k USD (or equivalent, e.g. in stocks) with them.

Problem

I’ve had an account for quite some time with IB now, but I have never seen this “inactivity” fee in action. In other words - when is it charged? How much did I actually pay? What if I misunderstand the system?

Solution

So far I have found only one way to observe this fee - through statements:

  1. Left Menu > Reports > Statements.
  2. Choose “Default Statements”.
  3. Choose “Activity” statement type.
  4. Choose “Year to Date” period.
  5. Click “Run Statement”.
  6. Look for “Fees” section and open it.

Fee section from the statement showing the fee for April applied in May.

As you can see, in this case the fee for April was applied in May and it was 2.37 EUR.

Happy transparent and easy to understand fees!