The shared layer
One verified profile for every account you own or control.
The same reusable profile that qualifies you on InvestNow opens your accounts here. Verify your identity, entities, ownership, tax status, banking, and signing authority once — then open, fund, and custody accounts without rebuilding any of it.
Delegation
Reused when you open an account
- Identity and tax classification (W-9 / W-8)
- Entity formation, good standing, and beneficial ownership
- Trustee, officer, and authorized-signer authority
- Beneficiaries and interested parties
- Verified bank accounts and funding sources
- Accreditation and qualification, where an account requires it
The Passport qualifies. The account agreement custodies.
The Passport identifies and qualifies the parties; the account agreement you sign creates the custody relationship. One never replaces the other. Every field is released by a per-record grant — denied by default, authorized per record by B5 Secure™, and written to a tamper-evident trail.
What the custodian still reviews
Reuse removes the re-typing, not the responsibility. Investor Services still completes its own customer-identification, AML risk assessment, sanctions screening, and account-eligibility review — it simply starts from verified information instead of a blank form. Your profile also stays current: it tracks document validity and prompts you before an ID, tax form, or authority expires.
Book a demo → Who sees your profile
Planned capability shown for demonstration. The Investor Passport does not replace the account agreement or any required review. Pre-charter: Institutional Trust Company is seeking a charter and is not currently accepting accounts.
Delegating an account, or a single asset
A client may hold several accounts of the same type. So “delegate my IRA” is not specific enough to act on: a grant names the account, and it can go narrower still and name one holding inside it.
The three ways to let someone act for you
Two of these already exist. Most people use one of them, and both have the same problem: once granted, they run until somebody remembers to stop them.
| Share your login | Sign a paper POA | Investor Passport | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What they can see | Everything you can see | All accounts under your tax ID, or a list of account numbers | Only the accounts — or the single asset — you name |
| Can you scope it to one investment? | No | No | Yes |
| Is there a dollar limit? | No | Not on the form | A threshold you set, and it aggregates over a window you set |
| When does it end? | When you change your password | When the custodian receives written notice it considers satisfactory | On the date you chose — and we ask you before it lapses. Immediately on death, by law |
| Can you revoke it yourself, today? | Only by locking yourself out too | Written notice, then processing | Yes — effective at time of change |
| Do you keep approval rights? | No | Usually not | Optional gate: nothing above your threshold is final until you approve |
| If two agents disagree? | — | Each may usually act alone; the account may be frozen until joint written instructions arrive | A named order of approval, enforced — no single agent acts alone above your threshold |
| Is there a record of what they did? | No — it looks like you | Not in the grant itself | Every action, with the purpose and the authority relied on |
| If they change firms? | Nothing changes | Often nothing changes | Suspended until you reauthorise |
What you can revoke, and when
You can withdraw or narrow authority at four levels, and the change takes effect the moment you make it — not at the next review, not when a request is processed, and not in the next business day’s batch.
- The whole Passport. Every delegation you have granted, across every account, ends at once.
- One account. Every asset held in that account, leaving your other accounts untouched.
- One asset in one account. The rest of that account stays as it was — revocation is as precise as the grant was.
- The limits themselves. Change a threshold, an aggregate window or an approval requirement across every account or on named accounts only, without withdrawing the delegation.
Because the change is immediate, control does not depend on office hours or on anyone else acting on your behalf. If you decide at midnight that an adviser should no longer be able to act, they no longer can.
An instruction that was accepted but has not yet completed fails when you revoke. That is the default, and it is deliberate: if a delegate’s credentials have been compromised, the instruction already moving is exactly the one you need stopped.
An in-flight instruction is allowed to finish only if you elected that in advance — a checkbox you tick yourself when you set the delegation up. No one can turn it on for you, a delegate cannot turn it on for themselves, and it is never inherited from another grant.
The two sentences that explain why this exists
- A standard custodial power of attorney says the agent remains your agent until the custodian receives written notice it considers satisfactory. That is not an expiry date. It is an open end.
- Where a form allows more than one agent, it commonly lets each of them act severally or individually — and that can include directing assets to themselves. A dollar threshold with a named approval order is the answer to that, and it is the reason thresholds aggregate rather than reset on each approval.
What a delegation actually contains
One record, nine properties. You set all of them.
| Property | What you choose |
|---|---|
| Who | A named person — not a firm. You choose the individual; the firm does not choose for you. |
| Scope | Everything, or named accounts, or an asset category, or a single investment. |
| What they may do | View, submit, execute, sign, or receive documents — separately, not as a bundle. |
| Threshold | Any dollar amount. Above it, you approve. |
| Aggregate window | A number of days you choose. Amounts add up across that window, and an approval does not reset the total. |
| Approval order | None, you alone, or a named sequence of approvers with their own thresholds. |
| Term | A start date and an end date. You set the end date. |
| On death | Ends at the moment of death, not at notice. Verbal notice triggers an immediate restriction on the account; control then passes to the estate representative. |
| On incapacity | Continues only if you deliberately choose that. Otherwise it stops. |
Three worked examples
Individual
One asset, one adviser, to year end
You hold three accounts. You delegate one holding in one account to your adviser: they may submit and execute up to $25,000 in any rolling 30 days, until 31 December. Above that, you approve. They can see the cash needed to settle inside that scope and nothing else. In December we ask whether to extend.
Entity
A ladder, not a signature
The entity names three authorised people. Up to $50,000 one approval is enough. Above $500,000, two levels must approve, in order. Above $5,000,000, three. A higher level approving does not satisfy a lower one — each level acts, and each action is recorded.
Family office
Documents only, for the accountant
The accountant receives tax documents and statements across every account and can do nothing else — no transactions, no transfers, no visibility into anything but the documents they need. The adviser holds a separate grant, with its own scope and its own expiry.
The rules that make it a control rather than a setting
It expires by default
- You set the end date when you grant it. There is no perpetual option.
- Before it lapses we ask you whether to extend. Silence lets it end — that is the safe direction.
Thresholds aggregate, and approvals do not reset them
- You choose the amount and the number of days it accumulates over.
- Approving one transfer does not clear the running total. If approval reset the counter, a limit could be defeated simply by asking repeatedly.
- Money moving out is counted separately from money moving in, because the risk is not symmetrical.
Authority is granted to a person, and it does not travel
- You choose the individual. If they move to another firm, every grant to them is suspended until you reauthorise it.
- Suspended, not cancelled — so you are told, and you decide.
- An adviser leaving a firm may not have your interests at the front of their mind. Reauthorisation should be a decision, not an inheritance.
Nobody may widen their own authority
- A delegate may not grant more than they hold, or for longer than they hold it.
- On an entity, the right to add or remove authorised people is held separately and cannot itself be delegated — otherwise the approval ladder could be rewritten by someone standing inside it.
Death and incapacity are choices you make in advance
- On death, the authority has already ended. A financial power of attorney is valid only during the account holder’s life. From the moment of death it confers no authority to act, sign or instruct — whether or not anyone has been told yet. No trade, withdrawal or transfer under it is permitted after that point.
- A phone call is enough for us to act. A certified death certificate takes time to obtain. So verbal notice — from a family member, the adviser or the wealth manager — is enough for the system to flag the account immediately, restrict outgoing transactions and changes, and protect the assets. We do not wait for paperwork to start protecting.
- Then authority shifts. It does not resume. Control passes to the executor named in the will, a successor trustee, or an administrator appointed by the probate court — not back to the delegate. We will tell you what we need, which will normally include a certified death certificate and letters testamentary or an equivalent court appointment.
- On incapacity: authority continues only if you deliberately choose that at the outset. Otherwise it stops. Most people never learn whether the power of attorney they signed was durable; here it is a checkbox with a record of what you chose.
- You may name a trusted contact to be told if a hold is placed on your account.
You can see what they did
Every grant has its own activity record: what was accessed or changed, by whom, for what stated purpose, under which authority, and when. Not a monthly statement after the fact — the decision itself, recorded as it is made, because authorisation is evaluated for each individual record rather than granted once as a role.
You receive a countersigned copy of every grant when it starts and when it ends. Above-threshold activity notifies you immediately; everything else arrives in a digest you control.
What the custodian does, and does not do
For a self-directed account the custodian is directed and non-discretionary. It executes and records what the account holder — or a delegate acting inside a granted scope — directs. It does not evaluate, recommend or approve an investment, and a delegation does not change that.
What the custodian does add is enforcement and evidence: the threshold is applied at the moment of the instruction, the approval order is required rather than requested, and the decision is recorded with the authority relied on. A signed form asserts that a control exists. This produces the record that shows it operated.
Two limits worth stating plainly
- In a self-directed retirement account, who you delegate to can matter as much as what you delegate. Granting authority to a disqualified person, or to someone who benefits from the transaction, can itself create a prohibited transaction. We will flag it at the point of the grant and record your acknowledgement — we will not make the legal determination for you, and you should take advice.
- A trustee is not a delegate. A trustee holds authority in their own right and is a fiduciary. Trust administration is governed by the trust documents, not by a delegation grant.
Institutional Trust Company is a proposed trust entity seeking a South Dakota non-depository trust charter. It is not yet chartered, is not accepting accounts, and no regulator has approved any application. This page describes how delegation is designed to work; the controls described are planned functionality. For self-directed accounts the custodian is a directed, non-discretionary, independent custodian — not a fiduciary, adviser or broker-dealer: the account holder or their authorised delegate directs, and the custodian executes and records. Granting authority to another person does not transfer responsibility for an investment decision, and does not make any investment suitable. Trust services are different — a trustee is a fiduciary, and a trustee holds authority in their own right rather than by delegation.