IBD Elite 2024: The 12 firms with the largest percentage of women advisors

The wealth management firms with the most women in their ranks of financial advisors stand out for following through more than their peers on a constantly stated goal for the industry, though they still lag far behind numbers that would reflect the general population of the U.S., which is more than 50% women. 

Kovack Financial Network, Level Four Financial, Independent Financial Group and Harbour Investments came in at the top of Financial Planning's 2024 IBD Elite rankings of independent brokerages with the biggest percentage of female advisors in the channel. 

However, a profession in which fewer than a quarter of certified financial planners are women and frequent gender-based discrimination lawsuits present disturbing allegations still has a long way to go, according to Sheryl Hickerson, the founder of Females & Finance, a 5,000-member networking community promoting inclusive practices for women and diverse professionals. 

"We have to put a checks and balances system in place for everyone," she said in an interview. "You have to be aware, you have to accept the problems and then you have to actively actually do something about it." 

In Hickerson's case, she often speaks with leaders of a half dozen "programships" at her organization — smaller groups within Females & Finance supporting professionals who are Black, Hispanic, neurodivergent, LGBTQ, male allies or work as financial coaches or money managers — and other advisors to ask what she could be doing better, she noted. Other types of checks for the industry include new hiring practices and training against unconscious bias.

"You should hire the best person for the job," she said. "We have to have people who look at us and say, 'I'm going to give you the opportunity to do this job.' Everybody should be getting an opportunity to do the work."

The issues come up often because there tends to be "a really big miss" when it comes to the industry moving from being aware that women are hired and promoted in disproportionately low numbers to an acceptance that wealth management is still struggling in this area, according to Hickerson. She compared the situation to the way that a blanket will have a hole in it "if you miss the first loop" in crocheting. 

"The only way to make it look right is to unravel the yarn back to that point," she said. "It's exactly the same way we're building a fabric in financial services."

Scroll down the slideshow to see which companies have the largest percentage of women in their ranks of advisors. For 2023's list, click here. Also, read the IBD Elite cover story, "The myth of big versus small" and check out the ranking of the 15 firms in the channel by annual revenue.

Notes: The companies are ranked below by the percentage of financial advisors who are women as of year-end 2023, as reported by the companies themselves. Financial Planning relies on each firm to state their metrics accurately. Out of the 41 participating companies in the IBD Elite study, 21 shared no data on the number of female advisors. The industry term "producing registered representative" refers to each firm's most accurate count of financial advisors using the firm as their brokerage or RIA. "Registered representative" refers to a usually larger group of all licensed professionals.