IBD Elite 2024: Top 10 firms with the fastest growing payouts

The pay for top financial advisor talent at the largest independent brokerages correlates strongly with a firm's success in retaining teams and clients and growing its businesses.

The listing below of the 10 firms with the highest percentage increases in average advisor compensation in Financial Planning's IBD Elite study of the independent brokerage channel includes giants such as Osaic, Cambridge Investment Research and Equitable Advisors, as well as some smaller players such as Arete Wealth, International Assets Advisory and Prospera Financial Services. The firms of any size that are the best at adding new advisors combine healthy offers of transition capital with active teams of recruiters, according to Jodie Papike, CEO of independent advisor and executive placement firm Cross-Search.

Small and midsize firms can still win out over a giant that waves "a better offer" of compensation if the prospective advisor builds a "good relationship with the head of business development," Papike said in an interview. Unfortunately, some firms display a "lack of a sense of urgency" when it comes to advisors who have expressed interest in learning more about them, she said.

"The people who are recruiting for you must be very, very good at what they do," Papike said. Advisors, "in a lot of cases, may choose to go to that firm just because they have a level of comfort."

Flexibility, the ability to speak with senior management on a regular basis and more leeway and influence around investments and other client services can also add up to a better fit for many advisors with a smaller or midsize firm, according to Tom Prescott, co-founder of Atlanta-based registered investment advisory firm Advisory Services Network.

"Most reps that I know are unhappy," Prescott said in an interview. "They're not being served the way they want to be served, and they're not getting the access, be it product or anything else."

Those other factors alongside the payout — the share of revenue generated by an advisory practice that it keeps after fees to the brokerage or RIA — add up to a complicated, highly particular mix for each team deciding whether to go through the trouble of switching firms. In the case of an acquisition in which the advisors wind up with a different brokerage or RIA after the M&A deal, the purchaser may struggle to hang on to the whole base of the incoming firm — especially if rivals are offering greener pastures that come with a bigger bonus, Papike noted.

"'I might as well look around and know what my options are,'" Papike said some advisors will think in that scenario. "It's going to be more difficult to keep those advisors in their seats."

Scroll down the slideshow to see the 10 independent brokerages with the fastest growing average payout in wealth management. To see a ranking of the largest firms in the channel, click here. For a list of the firms that have the highest percentage of women in their ranks of advisors, click here. And, to read the feature story of this year's IBD Elite study, "The myth of big versus small," follow this link.  

Notes: The companies are ranked below by the percentage of increase in their average financial advisor payout between 2023 and the prior year, as reported by the companies themselves. FP relies on each firm to state their annual metrics accurately, and each figure below is rounded. The industry term "producing representative" refers to the firms' most accurate count of financial advisors with the brokerage or RIA.