This is primarily because while many smaller intermediaries have gone bust, their clients’ investments – holdings in unit trusts or funds managed by big firms – have been untouched. The same should apply to any new broker today. Your investment in, say, a Jupiter fund, made through a fledgling broker, would not be exposed to the risk of that broker going bust. Unless something seriously untoward was afoot, such as fraud, the broker would not touch the money. It would go through a nominee account to the fund manager. If the broker subsequently failed, its list of clients, including your name and the details of your holdings (safely in the Jupiter portfolio), would in due course be sold by the liquidator to another broker, where service would hopefully resume as before.