Out of the groups of advisors included in Investment Executive‘s annual Report Card series, the investment advisors polled for the Brokerage Report Card tend to be quite satisfied on average.
For 2026, and across 27 areas assessed, the lowest benchmark performance average they gave their industry segment was 7.7 out of 10. That was for the social media training, content & rules category — an arena that’s often difficult for both firms and advisors to navigate.
The advisors surveyed (663 in total, from 14 investment dealers) indicated that several of the categories they cared most about were also areas in which their firms were meeting their needs fairly well. For example, they care deeply about their freedom to make product choices, with that category rated 9.8 out of 10 for its benchmark importance average. Advisors said their firms were hitting the mark, giving a benchmark performance average of 9.7.
The 10 categories that investment advisors prioritized most for 2026 were as follows.
The 10 categories with the highest benchmark performance averages, taking into account feedback from across the 14 firms on how well advisors were able to do their jobs, were as follows.
In the video included at the top of this post (lightly edited transcript is included below), IE‘s editorial director Kevin Press interviewed research manager Katie Keir about the key themes in this year’s Brokerage report. Check it out!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
OPENING: My name is Kevin Press. I’m editorial director of Investment Executive. I’m joined by Katie Keir, our research manager and the leader of our Report Card series. We’re here today to talk about the Brokerage Report Card. Fourteen different investment firms that we spoke to, tell us about who responded.
KATIE: That’s right. So, we’ve been doing this for 35 years. So, there is a strict methodology here that we have followed and yes, fourteen investment dealers, more than 650 advisors. And these advisors, again they work with strictly investment dealers, so no mixed or dual operation firms. And they had to have been with their firm for one year, they had to have been in the industry for three years and, they own a book/practice [and] they serve clients. We do not interview unlicensed team members or strictly assistants. It is the [advisors with the] investment dealers who are managing the client relationships.
KEVIN: Are these the fourteen biggest firms?
KATIE: So, the firms aren’t chosen based on market share. That is something in our methodology we do like to make clear. It is mainly based on their registration. We consider whether they fit the categories we’re asking about. Now it’s a broad 27 categories, so a lot of firms do meet this but we like firms to not only pay advisors and give back office but also have wealth tools, have compliance support, have business support.
And it’s a mix, right? We have bank-owned brokerages; you’re talking thousands of advisors potentially. We also have some of the smaller firms for variety, to reflect the industry. So, you know, these firms have in some cases fewer than 200 advisors.
You’re talking Odlum Brown, Leede Jones, Richardson Wealth, which of course has now been acquired. But there are also firms we don’t have in the Report Card. There are about 9,000 people [advisors] in our sample set across those fourteen firms, however. And again, we interviewed close to 700.
KEVIN: Fantastic. So big picture, how’s the broker channel doing?
KATIE: It’s a good question. It is, you know, I would say the Brokerage Report Card segment, these are a happy bunch of advisors. These firms have put a lot of money into making sure the tools are there, making sure the back office is there. Year over year we see the firms listening to people, they’re paying attention to the research. But of course, [also] to industry movement.
You know, we ask about Net Promoter Score at the firms. But for us, it’s more the category ratings and the benchmark averages. And so, in 2025, we had coverage noting that the bank-owned and investment dealer advisors were pretty satisfied. They were feeling good about where they worked, their books were growing, they were [managing], $300 million on average. Now there’s a span across different advisors. And so, they were happy.
And then this year I would say that has not really changed though we are seeing very slight pullback. If you look at the results table, we have year-over-year colours. There’s red for if advisor optimism has slipped slightly; green if it’s gone up. And there is more red than green on the chart [for 2026]. But that’s also just a function of it was very happy a year ago, there’s a natural ebb and flow. And also [for] their books, the top-producing advisors have seen growth. That [advisor book metric] has raised by about ten million.
The middle-market advisor in this segment, who again is still quite wealthy, is fairly stagnant. So, I think happy but feeling some growth pressure, and perhaps there’s some areas of their firms where they’re just a little less really, really happy.
KEVIN: We talk about culture a lot — really in all of the channels. How’s that look this year?
Yeah, so we ask a question now [on this]. For two years, we’ve asked advisors: “out of the six areas that we talk about, what’s most important to you?” We introduced this question because a lot of the firms were telling us, again as we’ve sort of touched on, some of these ratings tend to be quite high.
And so, they said, ‘Well, we don’t really know [what to do] based on the importance averages. What do we invest in, where do we go, everything is important.’ So, firm culture (for two years in a row), 38.2% [of advisors] have said — again, roughly around 40% both years — that culture is what is important to them. From that everything else grows. If you have a good culture, leaders are listening, leaders are investing where you want, leaders are paying you well. So, that’s kind of how that looks. Although I would say below that you have wealthtech and technology suite. Those separately are at about 18% and 20% [EDITOR’S NOTE: 18.8% for the general technology suite and 21.9% for wealth management tools].
If you combine them, you’re looking at around 40%. So, technology is still crucial, just culture is a huge part of it.
KEVIN: And we’re seeing so much merger and acquisition activity that obviously has an impact on the maintenance of culture — potentially [a] pro, potentially [a] con. How has that been playing out?
KATIE: Yeah, we added a question on this as well. So, this was new for this year. We asked advisors, how are you feeling about [M&A plus recruitment activity]. It was a pretty broad question just because we wanted to get open responses. You know, this isn’t new to the industry, it happens, and some advisors said that.
We again had a split in the answers. So as you’ll sort of see in the results: 42% of [the] advisors polled said, ‘I’m not really paying attention. I like where I work, I’m happy, what matters is my clients.’ Fair enough. This has happened in the industry for years, doesn’t change anything.
But then again, you have roughly the same percentage of people [advisors] combined who are either interested in or excited by opportunities in the industry. And so that means they want to see consolidation in some cases, to get scale. They want to see no consolidation in some cases because they don’t want the culture to be changed. They want the best for the client, they want a variety [of firm and service options], they want industry competitiveness.
They feel that when firms are competing amongst one another that does foster conversations around how well do you [firms/leaders] pay people, [how] well are you supporting people. Whereas, if you have too few players, that kind of comes out in the wash.
I should mention, we’ve seen over the past twelve to eighteen months, there [have] been multiple firms in the Brokerage Report Card that have seen significant change. So, you know, Richardson Wealth was bought by Industrial Alliance, so that has been playing out and there’s going to be rebranding.
At ScotiaMcLeod, John McCartney joined in summer 2025. So that is something people were thinking about. Most notably, Raymond James had a leadership change in the fall and then were sort of leaderless, for lack of a better term, for a little bit. And that, because we were in the market [collecting data] during that period [where leader Jamie Coulter had left] that is apparent in their results. And again, I’m not saying the results are necessarily bad, but you see a little bit of that pressure when you have some of that change.
KEVIN: It’s such a nuanced thing, right? There [are] so many aspects to culture. And leadership is obviously a big part of that. After you do the advisor research, you go talk to the executives in these firms, right? So what’d you hear from them?
KATIE: Yeah. We asked firms [about] their stance on recruitment, we asked about goals, we asked about growth. This is something that gets talked a lot about when you have calls with people [advisors and firm leaders].
But the banks are buyers, they’re not targets for being bought. So [we ask] what’s their position on growth? Some of the smaller firms, like Odlum Brown again, Wellington-Altus [Private Wealth], their names get thrown around as potential firms to buy [EDITOR’S NOTE: Odlum Brown president and CEO Trevor Short told Investment Executive by email that the firm is not for sale. None of the firms in the research said they were for sale, based on our interviews with brokerage leaders, and each company has a unique identity.]
They [those firms] are indicating that they care about their firm, care about their culture. Wellington-Altus has invited private-equity investments so that plays into it, but I think for the most part, firms are telling us, they’re happy with their cultures, happy with their identities, their reputations. No one was saying we’re putting ourselves on the market.
Now, the big firms have their eyes on the market, of course, though one thing I heard a lot was the word “intentional” — intentional recruitment, intentional growth. So, we have seen some of these firms say, we’re not putting a number on growth. We’re not saying we want X amount of advisors [and] we want X amount of assets. We’ve seen a pullback in that because they’re, again, using the term “intentional.” We want the right fit, the right advisor, the right team. It’s not asset growth for the sake of asset growth, in the executive’s words.
KEVIN: One of the things that we hear so often related to merger and acquisition activity is the power of scale. And of course, this is a driving force in this and many other industries. And yet, I’m struck by how the tech stack continues to be a pain point. You would think that as scale keeps improving, investments in technology would be carried out and you’d see scores that reflect that, but really not so much. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Firms receive ratings and not scores; the research is not a contest.]
KATIE: No, you know, that’s been one of the great consistencies in the research. We always hear the term [phrase], ‘Your tech investment is never done.’ And the research really shows that because, we’ve looked back even twenty years and back then it was how well is the firm integrating the internet. That was back at the beginning. Now we’re looking more at, you know, we have a tech stack. We’ve built out that category group in the past few years, so [we’re looking at] back office, onboarding, client relationship tools, we have client account statements portals, all these different elements. And yes, they continue to be on our list of areas where there’s a gap between an advisor’s expectation and […] how they feel the firm is doing.
And that again is not, the performance averages for these groups are between 7.9 [out of 10] and 9.6. So we’re not talking about a four out of ten, a five out of ten here, but we are talking about areas where [there’s] ebb and flow. There are times when a firm, so as an example, Edward Jones has a big tech transformation happening so that weighs on ratings, right, because things are changing. There [isn’t] stability, there’s change, and that has to be managed.
And so I think that’s what drives a lot of that. It’s just always changing.
KEVIN: It’s such an important point. These rollouts of new technology are often complex. They’re difficult. They’re stressful for both those rolling out the technology and for advisors trying to learn the new technology. So change is hard and I think we see that a lot in the numbers.
KATIE: Yeah, we do. The other thing you’ll see on the list is the advanced planning [categories]. You know, financial planning support, tax planning support, insurance planning. Again, these are things that are [rated] very high in importance for advisors. So compared to performance, especially when you have such a mix of firms, there’s a gap.
Now the gap again doesn’t mean [a] firm is failing. The gap just means I might be changing the tool on someone, I might be adding tools, functionalities. You know, we’re also adding artificial intelligence. So the work is never done and the advisor is always learning.
KEVIN: AI is the tech question on everybody’s mind, of course, these days. How are advisors feeling about that right now?
KATIE: Yeah. So, also to reflect themes, we asked a question here and we kept it broad. We said, ‘Do you understand your firm’s or bank brokerages policies around the use of AI tools?’ We asked about automation a year ago and we found that advisors were using it for quite simple tasks and so with AI, we wanted to do the same [wanted to keep it simple].
Eighty per cent of people [advisors] said, yep, I’ve heard about the policies, understand the policies, my firm is talking about this, not surprising. But then you have one in five advisors, combined, who […] ‘No, I don’t understand the policies’ and people who said, ‘I don’t understand AI.’ That was a very small percentage [the 2.9% who said they completely didn’t understand AI], and I feel like there’s a bit of false confidence here. Because I don’t think anyone really understands AI. I would have expected that to be a higher percentage.
But [generally] you’re still seeing one in five people who say, ‘You know, I’m cautious here. There [are] privacy issues. I think with any large language models (LLMs), people are learning, you need to give it proper context, you need to give it proper instructions, you need to make sure it’s not hallucinating. These are terms that you hear and do advisors understand these terms? That’s the question, right?
Some [advisors] say they’re huge early adopters of this. Others say I’m waiting for my firm to give more guidance. I think it starts from a place of client service, right? And from there how do you do it safely? And I would say that’s what executives have told us too. Very slow, very steady. They’re not looking to jump in.
KEVIN: Yeah, I think you make an important point though, right? That it’s not entirely clear how this plays out. We’ve got some best practices emerging, but to firmly state that we know how this plays out and we’re ready for it does feel a bit of a stretch.
Mike Floyd was on the Canadian Advisor.cast talking a little bit about this and his point was that this is not a tech project; that firms need to understand that this is going to require a business-model change. And he laid out a fascinating vision of the sort of centaur model of AI, half human, half, in this case, technology. I suppose that is good news for advisors who are absolutely part of the relationship, part of the loop of his vision. How’s the industry feeling about that idea?
KATIE: Yeah, I think advisors think a lot about their daily tasks, that’s their job —the client service. […] I’d almost say their admin assistants in some cases are using, [have] more exposure to some of this technology. We have heard, when it comes to back office, when it comes to automation, when it comes to the things like transcription and notetaking and filing. These are the things advisors are talking about. Booking meetings. [These are] a lot of the things that assistants and some of their junior staff would be taking care of, whereas senior advisors are in the relationship, they’re having the meetings, talking to people. Yes, of course, they’re probably using some AI tools to take notes. So, they should be getting familiar with it [AI].
But I think in terms of business models, there are firms who are talking [about], who are thinking like this. They’ve shared things with us like we’re trying to think of ways to bring in client streams that we’re not currently capturing, and some of that is hybrid advice. If you have a younger client without a lot of money, you’re either doing family office, you’re householding traditionally, or are there other ways? Are there innovative ways to bring them into the fold sooner? Are we there yet? No. But I think the conversations are happening, just not at a high strategic level.
KEVIN: It may turn out that the role of the advisor assistant ends up being transformed more greatly than the advisor as this plays out. Yeah. You mentioned before we got to the studio, financial planning and advanced planning were two spots where we saw real satisfaction gaps.
KATIE: Yeah, so we sort of mentioned this a bit earlier but these are areas again that are very important to advisors. It’s the core of their job. So they’re having these conversations. A lot of firms, you know, Conquest [Planning Inc.] is huge in the industry.
We get that a lot in the research. Firms are either looking at it, using it, implementing it in some way, adding functionality. But there’s other things too. Envestnet for investment planning, [and] there’s a lot of other different tools and also just the human side.
I think where you see more of the pressure is where capacity of the human side is not there. So as more advisors do estate planning especially, insurance planning, [and] as you get more in this conversation, if you don’t have a TEP, you’re not a tax expert, you’re going to need someone. Does the firm have that person? Does the person have capacity? These are a lot of questions.
We’ve even heard about thresholds on some of these functionalities. If you have a client who doesn’t have a lot of money, maybe they don’t need as complex of planning but they would like to have conversations around this. But there may be a threshold internally. You may need a million [dollars] to access some of these things. So, I think that’s what comes into play here; the way different firms approach it and also just the demand.
KEVIN: You’ve been doing this a number of years, Katie. Are there takeaways from this year’s results that you think signal a real need for change?
KATIE: Yeah, I always think about succession planning and this is again an area where we’ve tried to adapt our questioning. It used to be very straightforward: do you have a plan or not? Yes or no.
In the past couple of years, few years, we’ve seen people kind of in the middle of that. So they’ll say yes BUT it’s [my plan isn’t] quite finished because someone left my practice or my kid doesn’t want to take over my practice. No BUT I’m working on it. So then where do you put them?
And so we thought, well, we’re adding working on it. So this year we have, yes, 40% [of advisors], roughly, have a plan documented [and they’re] confident, even though it’s not set in stone. A plan is there, has been talked about. [For] No [I don’t have a plan], it’s roughly about the same, 40%. Haven’t really thought about it, usually that’s the younger set.
And then, [for the] working on [option], it is at about 20%. So, if you say yes and working on it [combined], you’re looking at 60% of advisors who are engaged in planning.
That is different than it was five, ten years ago. You know, two, three years ago, I’d say probably the same. But especially if you look back a decade, these advisors are thinking about this [more].
And I did a little bit of age segmentation. This I will read. If you look at people who are forty and under, 65% do not have a plan — not surprising. They’re in a growth phase. I’m sure they’ve thought about it a little bit, but I mean they themselves have probably just bought a book, they’ve been part of another person’s plan.
If you go to the 40 to 59 [years] stage, we’re looking at 20% work-in-progress, 38% [of advisors] with a plan. So about 60% total who are engaged in the planning.
[For] 60 [years] and above, 50% have a plan, another 23% are working on it. So combined, it’s almost eighty per cent [EDITOR’S NOTE: Total of 73%, so more than 70% anyway]. And now these are not numbers that I would say are […] You know, this is based on our sample, so I’m not saying that this reflects the entire industry. But within our sample, within the investment dealers, executives are talking about this and encouraging this. Teaming is a term we’ve heard for the past two years. I think this is very much on people’s minds now because retention of assets, retention of clients. […] It’s just good business.
KEVIN/CLOSING: Thanks so much Katie, wonderful stuff. Where can readers go to find the full details?
KATIE: Sure. Yeah. So, thank you again for joining us. If you want to read the full Brokerage Report Card for 2026, go to investmentexecutive.com/report cards.
Read the main results table for the 2026 Brokerage report.