Now in its 16th year, Investment Executive’s 2008 Brokerage Report Card surveyed 695 advisors at 16 firms to find out what investment advisors think of their firms.

New to the survey is Toronto-based boutique GMP Private Client LP. In addition, advisors rated their firms in two new categories.

First, advisors were asked to rate their firm’s marketing support, which reflects the reality that some advisors strongly value the individual marketing support their firms provide for their businesses.

Advisors were also asked to rate their firm’s support for financial planning, as the industry moves from the “stock jockey” mentality toward a more holistic approach. As well, IE researchers Neil Acharya, Aaron Broverman and Vera Ovanin asked advisors what percentage of their clients actually had a financial plan.

This year’s Report Card also changed the “How many clients do you serve?” question to “How many households do you service?” It seems that the majority of advi-sors can more easily estimate the number of households they serve than the number of individual clients.

IE also added a new section that broke down revenue originating from banking products into principal-protected notes, guaranteed investment certificates, term deposits and high-interest savings accounts rather than grouping them all under cash, as in previous years.

As for the scoring system and methodology, advisors were asked to provide two scores: one rating the firm’s performance and the other indicating how important that category is to the advisor’s business. Advisors scored their firms on a scale of zero to 10, with zero meaning “poor” or “unimportant” and 10 meaning “excellent” or “critically important.”

Individual scores were added together to determine the average score for each category — both firm-wide and Report Card-wide. The “IE rating” is the average of all categories for each firm; the “overall rating by advisors” is how advi-sors rated their firms out of 10. The average scores are displayed on the table on page C4.

In a situation in which an “N/A”
is shown rather than a numerical score, the firm does not provide that particular service to its advi-sors and, therefore, cannot be rated on it. — CLARE O’HARA