In light of Sporting Options, there has been a lot of discussion on the forum about ring-fencing accounts and the safety of your money with us.
We would like to reiterate that Betfair is the industry leader in protecting customer money and to explain the steps that we take to ensure that your money in your Betfair account is absolutely safe.
Your money is held in a legal trust with our bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland. It is in an account that is separate from Betfair’s company funds. The assets of the trust – your money – are protected by the law of equity. The trustee of the trust is a separate company called The Sporting Exchange (Clients) Limited, which does nothing other than administer the customer bank account.
In law, any transfer of trust assets that is outside the authority of the trustee can be traced and recovered from whoever has received them. A legal trust cannot be broken by any liquidator or receiver of Betfair because their rights would only relate to the assets of Betfair itself as opposed to the separately administered trust funds.
The account which holds your money is called TSE Clients and it is rigorously audited by KPMG, one of the big four global accountancy firms. TSE Clients can only use the trust money to pay winning punters, commission to Betfair, transaction fees to the Royal Bank of Scotland and pay money back to Betfair customers whenever they request it.
The Royal Bank of Scotland treats the customer account as money that is subject to a legal trust. Therefore even if RBS were to be liquidated, Betfair’s customers (as beneficiaries of a trust) would be first in the queue at RBS.
In our recently released annual report, for the year to April 30 2004, client funds in the trust account stood at £66m, which is a testament to the faith which you and all of our customers have in us. As a result you can bet with Betfair in absolute confidence.
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