FA Magazine April 2025 | Page 47

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AUM 2024($ MM)

32 The O. N. Equity Sales Company 280 65.8 234,541 Up to 92 % 10,212.8 33 LaSalle St. Securities 325 65.5 201,000 90 +% 15,000.0 34 Vanderbilt Financial Group 275 58.1 210,000 Up to 92 % 7,323.3 35 cfd Investment 150 55.2 368,000 Up to 92 % 7,000.0 36 Founders Financial Securities 91 49.5 543,435 Up to 90 % 5,319.8 37 Fortune Financial Services 260 20.9 80,360 Up to 90 % 3,551.5 38 Trustmont Financial Group 82 15.1 184,000 Up to 90 % 2,141.6 39 Globalink Securities 110 8.0 72,806 Up to 90 % 952.7 40 Signal Securities 37 6.6 178,232 Up to 90 % 1,400.0

* Total AUM includes brokerage and advisory assets. ** Responses based on firm ' s fiscal year. † Northwestern Mutual Investment Services’( NMIS’ s) AUM and revenue information includes NMIS brokerage accounts and investment advisory accounts of NMIS’ s affiliated federal savings bank, Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company( NMWMC), which are held at NMIS. We combine the information provided because NMIS markets itself under the umbrella of the Northwestern Mutual enterprise, which combines the offerings of NMIS and its parent and affiliates. ‡ Represents gross revenue per producing rep. ‡‡ Depends on the product.

To download an expanded version of our survey, visit fa-mag. com / research / bd-survey.

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vate credit out there. And that allows us to have to not deal with the complexities of being a publicly traded company.”

What Advisors Want

As the broker-dealer industry has grown, so have the assets of its clientele, so it should be no surprise that there’ s more demand from advisors for help working with higher-net-worth clients. Broker-dealers’ ability to add more services for this clientele has also made the relationships stickier.

Marc Cohen, managing director of business strategy and innovation at LPL Financial, agrees that advisors are asking for more help serving higher-net-worth clients with holistic advice, including tax alpha issues and estate planning.“ I think advisors are realizing they can’ t do that by themselves.”

Brad McMillan, managing principal and chief investment officer at Commonwealth, said his firm has been working toward that goal as well and has recently come out with a suite, including a personalized indexing product, that will be part of a unified managed account program.“ We have a personalized indexing product that allows tax alpha. That’ s proved to be enormously attractive. We pulled some [ advisors ] in specifically because of that,” he says. We just

“ We have a personalized indexing product that allows tax alpha. That’ s proved to be enormously attractive. We pulled some [ advisors ] in specifically because of that.”

— Brad McMillan, Commonwealth

cut back on our SMA pricing. It’ s much more of a focus on high-net-worth services and advisors. That’ s something that frankly historically we haven’ t done as good a job on as we should have because we were kind of mid-market.”

Separately managed account products like this, he says, mimic an index like the S & P 500, but allow clients to realize gains at the individual stock level while saving on taxes. That way, if a client comes in with, say, a large holding in Apple, you can wash that out for tax reasons.

“ The real reason to do it is for tax alpha,” McMillan says.“ It helps manage the exposure to other assets.”

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