Public

Is Public safe?

Your investments at Public are about as safe as at other US app brokers that use Apex Clearing. Open to the Public Investing, Inc. is a SEC-registered broker-dealer and FINRA member. It passes trades to Apex Clearing, which holds client securities and cash, and both are covered by SIPC, with an excess policy from Lloyd's underwriters on top. We score Public 72/100.

The weak point is the company, not the custody. Public is privately owned and publishes no group accounts, and its broker-dealer had $11.1 million of equity at the end of 2025 after years of losses. Three FINRA fines since 2023, including one over a share-lending programme, also weigh on the score.

Who actually holds your assets?

Public is an introducing broker on a fully disclosed basis. That means it never holds customer money or securities itself; its audited statement says so and claims the matching exemption from the SEC's customer protection rule. Apex Clearing Corporation keeps the accounts and must segregate client assets from its own.

Product	Company	Protection
Stocks, ETFs, options, bonds	Open to the Public Investing, Inc.; custody at Apex Clearing	SIPC plus Apex excess policy
High-Yield Cash Account	Swept by Apex Clearing to partner banks	FDICDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary up to $250,000 per bank
Treasury bills	Jiko Securities, Inc.	SIPC (Treasuries are not FDIC-insured)
Crypto	zerohash llc	None
Event contracts	Through KalshiEX LLC	Not SIPC

Public operates only in the US. If you use it for more than stocks, check which line of this table each balance sits on, because the protection changes with it.

How much protection do you get?

If assets were missing after a failure, SIPC would replace up to $500,000 per customer, of which $250,000 can be cash. Public's help centre says Apex has bought an additional policy from a group of London underwriters led by Lloyd's syndicates, but it does not give the limits. Webull customers whose accounts are cleared by Apex fall under the same kind of policy.

Public ended its old cash sweep in January 2024. Uninvested cash in the main brokerage account now stays at Apex under SIPC cover. The separate High-Yield Cash Account is a secondary brokerage account whose cash Apex sweeps to partner banks. Each bank insures up to $250,000, including any money you already hold there, and once every partner bank is full, extra cash is placed without regard to FDICDeposit insuranceA government-backed scheme that repays bank customers up to a set limit if their bank fails, such as the FDIC in the US or the FSCS in the UK.More in the glossary limits. The terms leave it to you to watch those totals.

How strong is Public financially?

Hard to judge, because the group is private. The only audited figures are for the broker-dealer. At 31 December 2025 it had total equity of $11.1 million and net capital of $8.5 million, far above its $250,000 minimum, but an accumulated deficit of $42.9 million. The notes to its statement mention a cumulative loss over the three years to 2025.

Public Holdings raised $220 million at a $1.2 billion valuation in February 2021, at the peak of the retail trading boom. We found no later round confirmed by Public itself. Because your assets sit with Apex rather than Public, a failure of Public would mean a transfer to another broker rather than lost holdings, but it would still be disruptive. That is why financial strength scores 55 even though protection scores well.

What has FINRA fined Public for?

• June 2023, $500,000: Public did not carry out reasonable reviews of the execution quality its customers' orders received, relying only on its clearing firm's quarterly reports.
• December 2023, $500,000 plus $28,124 restitution: from May 2020 to September 2022 more than 1.5 million customers were enrolled in its fully paid securities lending programme at account opening without proper checks. Public kept over $2.5 million of lending revenue, while customers lost SIPC protection and voting rights on loaned shares. Since June 2023 customers receive part of the fees.
• May 2025, $350,000: paid influencers brought in more than 23,000 funded accounts with posts that were not fair and balanced.

The share-lending case matters most, because it touched the protection customers thought they had. Moomoo and Webull have paid similar influencer fines; see moomoo.

How to keep your Public account safe

1. Check whether your shares are enrolled in securities lending. Loaned shares lose SIPC cover for the length of the loan.
2. Turn on biometric login and protect your phone number against SIM swaps, because the login code comes by SMS.
3. Keep High-Yield Cash Account balances under $250,000 per partner bank, counting money you hold there directly, or exclude banks you already use.
4. Treat crypto and event-contract balances as unprotected.

How we scored it

Regulation (88) and investor protection (78) carry Public's score: a FINRA-member broker with assets held at Apex under SIPC and an excess policy. Financial strength (55) is the weakest factor, reflecting a small, loss-making broker inside a private group. Conduct (70) reflects three FINRA cases, one with client harm. Account security (66) is held back by SMS-only two-factorTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary login.