Finding the best tools and resources to run a practice effectively is why independent advisors choose one broker/dealer over another. There are lots of quantifiable reasons an advisor sticks with a firm, but like any good relationship, there is a...

For the last couple of years, the independent broker/dealer channel has been in a tough spot. Post-crisis, IBDs have been buried by increased compliance burdens, greater demand for investment in technology and a lot of additional risks and costs ...

If relationships are the heart of the advisory business, technology, it could be argued, is the circulatory system, ensuring the information that supports the relationship goes where it’s needed without trouble. In that respect brokerage firms a...

Advisors’ perspective on their current firms is strongly influenced by what kind of firm they came from. REP.’s 2014 Independent Broker/Dealer Report Card found that almost 40 percent of advisors at IBDs have worked with another IBD previous to t...

This is the fourth year the staff of REP. magazine has put together the Independent Broker/Dealer Report Card. We surveyed a total of 2,649 advisors across 22 brokerages to get their views on the industry and what they think about the firms they ...

The ascendency of fee-based compensation in the IBD space continues and independent reps now make less than half their compensation from commissions. Today, some 48 percent of an independent advisor’s compensation comes from asset-based fees. So...

Soaring equity markets gave a boost to advisors’ compensation and benefits this year, with advisors’ average score of their firms rising to 8.8 from 8.7 last year. Summit Brokerage Services, Securities Service Network and VSR Financial Services g...