Now in its 18th year, Investment Executive’s Brokerage Report Card saw researchers Fiona Collie, Anna Olejarczyk and Dinah Zeldin speak with 627 advisors at 15 firms to find out what they think of their brokerages.

Advisors were asked to rate their firms on two levels: the firm’s performance in a category, and the importance of that category to their businesses. Advisors rated both levels 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 firm-wide and Report Card-wide. The “IE rating” shows the average of 34 categories for each firm.

An additional category, the “firm’s overall rating,” is how advisors rated their firms out of 10.

Similar to last year, advisors were asked to rate their firm’s support during the market downturn, as they were still being affected by it throughout much of 2009.

New this year are two support services questions: “support for helping your clients accumulate assets for retirement” (i.e., planning ahead for their retirement) and “support for helping your clients plan for their income during their post-retirement years.”

To continue reading the results of the 2010 Brokerage Report Card and report cards from previous years, click on the links below.

— CLARE O’HARA