M1 Finance

M1 Finance was founded in 2015 by Brian Barnes and is headquartered in Chicago. M1 Finance LLC is a FINRA-member broker-dealer (CRD 281242) and SIPC member, wholly owned by M1 Holdings, which also runs an SEC-registered investment adviser and a banking affiliate. The platform's signature feature is the Pie: a self-directed portfolio of fractional stock and ETF slices that automated deposits keep in balance.

The product has slimmed down in recent years. The paid M1 Plus membership was discontinued in May 2024, replaced by a flat $3 monthly platform fee that is waived once you hold $10,000 or more across M1 accounts or have an active M1 personal loan. The Owner's Rewards credit card was shut down in May 2025 after its technology partner exited the business. What remains is the core: brokerage, margin borrowing and a high-yield cash account paying around 3.1% APY.

M1's licences are solid, but its recent disciplinary history is directly relevant to anyone arriving through a referral link. In March 2024, FINRA fined M1 $850,000 in its first-ever enforcement case over influencer marketing: roughly 1,700 social-media influencers posted unreviewed and in some cases misleading promotional content that brought in nearly 40,000 new accounts. In December 2023, M1 was one of four firms ordered to pay a combined $2.6 million over misleading disclosures in fully-paid securities lending programs, where customers were told they would be compensated but received nothing.

Neither case questions the safety of client assets, and the current referral program is run directly by M1 rather than through influencers. But they are a useful reminder to read the actual promotion terms rather than a creator's summary of them.

M1's flagship public offer pays $75 each to referrer and friend, but the qualifying bar is high. The friend must be a first-time M1 customer, open a taxable brokerage account through the referral link, deposit at least $10,000 within 30 days of signing up, and keep that balance for another 30 days. The bonus lands in a taxable brokerage account (never an IRA), typically within 14 business days of qualifying.

Once credited, the bonus carries its own 90-day holding period: it can be invested but not withdrawn or transferred out, and pulling it early forfeits it. Referrers are capped at 10 bonuses, $750, per calendar year. Employees of M1, FINRA member firms and marketing affiliates are excluded, as is anyone who signed up through an affiliate link. M1 applies the IRS $600 de minimis threshold, so heavy referrers can expect a 1099.

Beyond the referral offer, M1 runs an invitation-only margin-rate discount program and has previously run tiered transfer bonuses paying up to $20,000 on very large ACAT transfers; the most recent transfer promotion expired in March 2024 and its page now says so explicitly. A high-yield cash APY boost promotion also lapsed in early 2026. If you are moving a large portfolio, it is worth checking whether a transfer promotion has been revived before initiating the ACAT.

M1 is US-only: promotions require being 18 or older and a US citizen or eligible legal resident. ACAT transfers require matching account names, and any securities M1 does not support are liquidated automatically during the transfer, which can create taxable events worth planning around.

The referral bonus's economics are straightforward: $75 on a $10,000 deposit is a 0.75% one-off return for two months of parked capital plus a 90-day lockup of the bonus itself. That is decent as brokerage bonuses go, but only for money you already intended to invest; it is not worth pulling funds out of a better arrangement for.