The strangest thing about an individual retirement account is how little the law dictates what must go inside it. Most people meet the IRA as a tidy shelf of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, because that is what a brokerage knows how to sell and hold. IRA Financial built a business around the much messier remainder: the rental house, the private loan, the startup stake, the gold bar and, more recently, the cryptocurrency trade. Its job is to put an account wrapper around those investments without letting the wrapper tear.
That sounds like a niche service for collectors of exotic assets. It is increasingly presented as something broader. The South Dakota-chartered trust company says it serves more than 27,000 active accounts with over $8 billion invested or administered. In 2026 it added real-time securities trading powered by Interactive Brokers and rebuilt its crypto platform around nearly 100 tokens. The pitch is no longer simply that an IRA can own unusual things. It is that the unusual and the ordinary can live together.
The menu was a business choice
Founder Adam Bergman arrived at the problem through tax law. Clients kept asking why retirement money could not follow them into deals they understood. The short answer was often that the custodian would not permit it, not that the tax code forbade it. Bergman launched IRA Financial in 2010 to translate that gap into a product: form the right account, hold the asset in the right name, process the transaction, report it correctly and keep a human nearby when the rules become peculiar.
The result sits between software, custody and professional administration. IRA Financial is not an investment adviser choosing a property or token for the customer. It is a non-fiduciary custodian and plan administrator. That distinction is central. The company can explain account mechanics and support compliance; the customer decides whether the duplex leaks, the founder is honest or the coin has a future.
“The future of retirement isn’t in Wall Street alone - it’s in empowering individuals to invest where they believe.”Adam Bergman, founder
What customers can actually do
The core Self-Directed IRA can hold eligible real estate, private placements, precious metals, crowdfunding positions, private credit and digital assets. A Checkbook IRA adds an IRA-owned limited liability company, giving its manager faster transaction control without asking the custodian to approve every payment. That can matter when an auction deposit or property repair will not wait for a form. It also creates more room for an owner to make a prohibited transaction by accident.
For a self-employed person with no full-time employees other than a spouse, IRA Financial offers Solo 401(k) documents and administration. The account can combine relatively high contribution capacity with alternative investments, participant loans where permitted and traditional or Roth treatment. Entrepreneurs have another, marvelously unfriendly acronym: ROBS, or Rollover as Business Startups. In that structure, eligible retirement money rolls into a new 401(k), which buys stock in a C corporation and supplies the business with capital. It can replace a loan, but it brings recurring plan duties and close scrutiny of how the company is operated.
Crypto is the fast-moving edge. The rebuilt platform offers real-time trading, mobile access, price charts, order history and portfolio tracking. Trades run through Bitstamp infrastructure, and IRA Financial handles retirement-account reporting. Public securities now use another rail, supplied by Interactive Brokers. Stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, bonds, options and currencies can sit beside alternative assets without forcing the client into a separate taxable brokerage account.
A customer who wants the steering wheel
IRA Financial is for people whose investing life does not fit a target-date fund. A real-estate operator may want rents and sale proceeds to remain inside an IRA. A private-market investor may need a custodian willing to hold an interest that never appears on a stock exchange. A freelancer may want a Solo 401(k) with more choices than a low-cost brokerage template. A franchise buyer may prefer to risk retirement capital rather than take on debt through a ROBS structure.
Company survey data gives the audience a recognizable shape. Among more than 6,000 respondents, 71.2 percent said access to assets unavailable in traditional plans helped draw them to self-direction; 46.1 percent cited control. Real estate led stated investment interest for 2026, but public equities placed second. That pairing helps explain the unified-platform strategy: these customers are not necessarily leaving the stock market. They want the stock market to stop being the entire menu.
What clients wanted to invest in for 2026
Company survey / 6,000+ responsesThe business is a tollbooth, not a fund
IRA Financial makes money from account setup, administration, custody and activity fees. Its defining commercial choice is flat annual pricing rather than a percentage of the account. The fee schedule varies by structure and service; public-market access and crypto trading carry their own charges, while a ROBS plan requires more expensive setup and upkeep. Because the company does not sell the underlying property or private fund, its recurring revenue is attached to keeping the account alive and compliant.
That model also explains the education machine around it. Bergman has written nine books, and the company publishes a deep library on contribution limits, unrelated business taxable income, prohibited transactions and account structures. Education attracts customers, but it also lowers support friction in a product where an innocent payment from the wrong bank account can matter. Tax expertise here is both the moat and the manual.
Freedom is not due diligence
A self-directed custodian can help keep an account within retirement rules. It does not certify that a private deal is sound, liquid or fairly priced. The investor owns that decision.
Where control meets consequence
The category carries hazards that a brokerage menu quietly removes. Alternative assets can be illiquid, difficult to value and vulnerable to fraud. Rules bar certain dealings with the account owner and other disqualified people. Holding property personally, mixing funds or benefiting from an IRA asset can threaten the account's tax status. Crypto adds market volatility and cybersecurity risk.
IRA Financial has lived the last risk, not merely disclosed it. In February 2022, attackers stole roughly $36 million in crypto belonging to retirement customers through accounts connected to Gemini. IRA Financial sued the exchange, alleging security failures; customers also pursued claims, and the dispute between the companies was later reported settled. The episode is an important piece of the company's history because account infrastructure is ultimately a trust product. New charts and fast execution are conveniences. Controls, custody design and recovery plans are the foundation.
Today the trust company says it operates under South Dakota banking supervision, with anti-money-laundering, identity verification, third-party audit and cybersecurity programs. Those controls do not make an alternative investment safe. They define the institutional layer around it. A useful way to understand IRA Financial is that it tries to make unusual ownership administratively ordinary.
A crowded market, a wider aperture
The alternatives are numerous. Equity Trust, STRATA, Entrust, Directed IRA, Madison Trust and Quest Trust compete for self-directed custody. Rocket Dollar, Alto and Broad Financial approach pieces of the market with software, crypto access or checkbook structures. Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard remain the obvious choice for someone who only wants exchange-traded securities at minimal cost.
IRA Financial's claimed distinction is breadth: multiple retirement structures, in-house tax and ERISA knowledge, flat fees, real-time crypto and now Interactive Brokers-powered securities in one account. The combination is more defensible than any single feature. Crypto access can be copied. An LLC can be formed elsewhere. A cheap brokerage already exists. Joining the rails while handling custody and reporting is the harder product.
The company reported that assets under administration grew more than 25 percent in 2025 and that account growth accelerated more than 60 percent compared with the prior year's pace. In 2026, Sioux Empire United Way named it Business of the Year, the platform added public-market trading, the crypto experience was rebuilt, and Clay Cowan - formerly of Betterment, McKinsey and consumer technology businesses - took over as chief executive. Tyler Northrup moved to president and chief operating officer of the trust company, concentrating operational responsibility around the regulated core.
Cowan inherits a clear strategic question. Can IRA Financial become the main retirement account rather than the specialist account parked beside it? The answer depends less on how many asset icons fit on a dashboard than on whether money, records and rules travel cleanly between them. A building produces rent on its own schedule. A private fund sends capital calls. A token trades at midnight. An ETF reprices all day. Making those objects appear in one account is the visible achievement. Making them behave like one trustworthy portfolio is the work.