Automated Customer Account Transfer Service

Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (ACATS) is an almost entirely electronic system in the United States that executes the transfer of financial securities from a trading account at one institution to the trading account at another. ACATS was developed by the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), now a subsidiary of Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a private holding company owned collectively by banks and financial institutions that handles the settlement of the vast majority of securities transactions in the United States.^[1]

In 2023, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued new rules regarding ACATS because of concerns about an increase in ACATS fraud. In this type of fraud, the attacker steals a victim's identity, opens a new brokerage account in the victim's name, and issues an ACATS request to transfer securities from the victim's true brokerage account to the new one.^[2]