How we did it

This year’s brokerage report Card followed the mantra: “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”

So, when Investment Executive (IE) researchers Justin da Rosa, Tessie Sanci and Dane Taylor spoke with 530 financial advisors at 13 brokerage firms, the process was consistent with years past. At the same time, there are a few changes to the main ratings table worth noting. (See page C4.)

One of the changes in the ratings is how the top scores are represented. In the past, IE boldfaced the top score in each individual category. However, it was decided that boldface will no longer be used, as this emphasis does not reflect the main goal of the Report Card series, which is to provide advisors with a voice.

The advisors who participated in this year’s Brokerage Report Card were selected randomly from IE’s research database and were asked to provide two ratings for each category in the survey questionnaire: one for their firm’s performance in that category; and another to specify the importance of that category to their businesses.

Ratings in all 38 categories were based on a scale of zero to 10, with zero meaning “poor” or “unimportant”; and 10 meaning “excellent” or “critically important.” Individual ratings were then averaged for each category, both for each firm and for the entire Report Card. The “IE rating” indicates the average of all categories for each firm. An additional category, the “overall rating by advisors,” is how advisors rated their firms out of 10, on average.

Finally, Toronto-based TD Waterhouse Private Investment Advice has been rebranded as TD Wealth Private Investment Advice to represent better the wealth-management-related services the firm provides.