Silverbird and its partners (in our case,
CurrencyCloud) are required by law to separate clients' money from its funds.
By doing this, it ensures that if anything were to happen to Silverbird or its partners, your claims are to be paid from the safeguarding account in priority to all other creditors.
To explain in more detail: once an e-money institution receives your money, it must either place it in a dedicated "safeguarding account" with a bank or invest it in low-risk assets that the regulator has approved as an alternative to cash. Less commonly, it may protect the money with an insurance policy instead. Your money must stay in these accounts or investments until you spend it.
The protection this provides means that if an e-money institution fails, there should be a pot of money (the safeguarding account) sufficient to pay all customers the money they are owed. Your claims are to be paid from these safeguarding account in priority to all other creditors. The only thing that can be paid from these safeguarding accounts before the customers are paid back their e-money is the cost of the administrator or liquidator (the person who’s appointed to manage the closure of a failed company).