Top 10 RIA-Friendly Indie BDs

With all the turmoil in the markets, one might wonder which broker-dealers are thriving, which are merely surviving and which are shutting their doors.

Investment Advisor magazine releases its 2012 Broker-Dealer Reference Guide, a review of the top 25 BDs in five major categories using numbers through 2011, to help you sort it all out and ensure a lasting and profitable relationship for you and your clients. All data is as of April 1, 2012, and was supplied by the broker-dealers themselves. (Investment Advisor has not independently confirmed the data.)

Here, AdvisorOne hightlights the Top 10 IBDs that are friendliest to RIAs, ranked by percentage of the firm’s reps who own their own RIA, of the 25 listed in the Reference Guide. Also, check out Top 10 Indie BDs With Best-Producting Advisors and Top 10 Indie BDs by Annual Revenue.

As IA mentioned last year, the rise of “hybrid advisors”—those who affiliate with a broker-dealer while simultaneously running their own RIA firm—continues. “The advisor’s business will not grow through market appreciation simply because our analysts tell us returns will be lower going forward,” Bill Dwyer of LPL Financial told us last year. That “means advisors will have to grow their practices by adding clients. The autonomy that independent advisors experienced in the 1980s and 1990s, almost ruggedly so, is no longer possible,” Dwyer says. “It’s just too costly.”

(Image of Geneos Wealth Management website.)

10. First Allied Securities

Reps With Their Own RIA:  14.2%

CFPs in Total Rep Force:  20.2%

Avg. Years’ Experience per Advisor:  19

9. Geneos Wealth Management

Reps With Their Own RIA:  16.7%

CFPs in Total Rep Force:  33.3%

Avg. Years’ Experience per Advisor:  20

(Image of Securities America website.)

8. Securities America

Reps With Their Own RIA:  19.7%

CFPs in Total Rep Force:  29.0%

Avg. Years’ Experience per Advisor:  NA

7. Cambridge Investment Research

Reps With Their Own RIA:  21.3%

CFPs in Total Rep Force:  27.1%

Avg. Years’ Experience per Advisor:  18

(Image of FSC Securities website.)

6. American Portfolios Financial Services

Reps With Their Own RIA:  22.0%