Research for the 2026 Brokerage Report Card by Investment Executive (IE) was conducted by seven research journalists: Rosa Beig, Roland Inacay, Filip Kovacevic, Diane Lalonde, Ciara Lalor-Lindo, Alisha Mughal and Noah Trenton. These researchers spoke with 663 investment advisors across Canada from 14 investment dealer firms or brokerages.
Data was collected via telephone interviews with the advisors, held between Jan. 4 and March 6. All respondents were registered, full-time investment advisors who had worked with their firm for at least one year and in the industry for at least three years.
Advisor participants provided two ratings each for their firms’ support systems and services, across 27 categories: one rating for performance, considering how well their firm was helping them run their business and serve clients; and the other for importance, sharing how crucial each category or support area was to them personally.
Both ratings were on a scale of zero to 10 — a rating of zero meant “very poor” or “unimportant,” while a rating of 10 signified “excellent” or “critically important.” Advisors were asked to provide ratings only for services and systems they had used directly.
For each firm, advisors’ ratings are aggregated into average category results across the 27 categories. A significant change requires a year-over-year shift by half a point or more in a firm’s category rating.
This also applies to: firms’ IE ratings, the average of all of a company’s category ratings and the overall 2026 performance and importance averages (both are a tally of all the firm ratings by advisors in a given category).
A satisfaction gap is the difference between a category’s performance and importance ratings, where importance is higher and advisors want more support from their firms.
The Report Card series isn’t an awards program or contest, and it isn’t a ranking exercise. It doesn’t base a firm’s or advisor’s inclusion or results on sales activity, revenue or assets. The project is editorial-driven research that aggregates opinion- and experience-based data, using a rigorous methodology.
No categories were removed or added compared with the 2025 Report Card.
Advisors were also asked four supplemental questions, alongside anonymous questions about their business details. The queries were:
1) Out of the six groups of categories included in the Report Card, which group is most important to you personally when it comes to your business and firm relationship? (See main results table).
2) How prepared do you feel to comply with total cost reporting requirements/CRM3, leading to more complex fee discussions with clients?
3) Which statement best illustrates how you feel about industry merger-and-acquisition activity, and increasing advisor recruitment activity, thinking about the way it affects the industry?
4) Are you aware of your firm’s/bank’s policies and strategies around the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools and software? (See our story on firms’ use of AI tools.)