Tags: independent broker-dealers

Less than a week after signing up every single advisor in the LPL network, the Financial Services Institute keeps winning members and cash contributions to its pro-IBD cause.

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The latest independent broker-dealer to register its members en masse is Investors Capital, which boasts over 500 advisors on its books.

Investors Capital went a few steps beyond LPL in its support for the lobbying group, which has included bringing RIAs under FINRA supervision in its policy agenda. 

While LPL only paid the first-year dues for its 12,000 advisors, Investors Capital is effectively paying its advisors' membership fees for life.

And it is matching any additional contributions they make to the group. At the firm's recent national conference, the matching program helped FSI raise at least $25,000.

Tim Murphy, the firm's longtime CEO, says "what's good for FSI is good for the industry."

Dale Brown, CEO at FSI, says his group has a five-year plan to get their agenda in front of lawmakers. Right now, they're going after the Labor Department's tighter fiduciary rules for retirement plan advisors as well as the SEC's efforts to meet Dodd-Frank requirements to apply the fiduciary code to all advisors.

They're not overconfident yet. As Brown says, "We need all the firepower we can get."

Broker-dealers already staggering under new and looming regulations are asking whether a sudden lull in trading activity might drive a few weaker players out of the business.

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Industry watchers say there's a good chance market volume will "flatline" for the rest of the summer, taking broker revenue with it.

That, in turn, could be all it takes to shut down a few firms that were already on their way out.

Good piece laying out the issues at Investment News.

Charles Schwab took in $9.9 billion last month, but the new client flows failed to boost its overall AUM appreciably.

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Schwab's latest monthly activity report reveals that even though investors poured almost $10 billion into the company in July, trading losses of $16 billion brought its overall managed assets back down to March levels.

In fact, since April, close to 2% of Schwab's AUM has gone away.

New account formation tailed off a full 8% on a month-over-month basis.

Schwab has been spinning this as demonstrating solid year-over-year growth, and in that respect they're right: AUM is up a solid 16% and new account formation has accelerated.

Trading volume has also increased month over month and year over year.

But in the short term, the company's clients have now absorbed significant losses for three months in a row now.

If they keep pushing fresh capital into the Schwab platform, great. If not, we could look back to last month as a turning point for flows throughout the industry.

In a somewhat unorthodox recruiting move, Baird has hired a two-advisor team from Charles Schwab's private client unit to beef up its Denver operation.

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The Capuano Butler Group, formerly of Schwab's high-net-worth network, formally made the leap to Baird on August 11.

Dominic Capuano is a former baseball announcer who came to Schwab in 1996, while Tim Butler spent 18 years at the firm in various capacities, including training other advisors.

Baird currently employs three advisors in Denver under branch manager Richard Palm.

As yet, the employee-owned firm is still a little new to the Rocky Mountain region: Palm also heads up a branch in Boulder and there's a Baird rep in Salt Lake City, but that's about it.