Paasa offers IBKR accounts for Indian residents. What are the advantages of opening through Paasa versus opening an IBKR account directly, and does Paasa charge anything extra on top of IBKR's fees?
1 Answers
Advantages of Paasa over direct IBKR:
- indian Taxation/compliance support
- Indian local support team
- Better conversion pricing with tie-up with HDFC, Kotak, etc (useful if you are not using AU's zero forex markup or have not got a better price somewhere else)
Advantages of direct IBKR over Paasa:
Lower pricing for bigger single orders
Yes, Paasa is a sub-broker registered with IBKR, but there is no extra charge applied by Paasa; so Paasa and IBKR have the same cost structure. It's fine to pick any of these. Paasa may be slightly better due to their Indian tax compliance support.
Better to open an account with AU as it would be easier to do a wire transfer; otherwise, you have to give a cheque from another bank, and processing may take time. You can even open a zero balance account for that.
