The 2014 Broker-Dealer Presidents Poll

If finding and recruiting reps is job one for broker-dealer presidents, our 58 respondents picked finding new clients as the top short-term challenge for their reps. RJFS's Curtis linked that answer with the fourth most popular response. "Older advisors tend to have older clients," who as they age "have to find [new] assets just to break even" on their assets under management. His concern for reps? "Never mind the markets, I still need to grow my book 5% to 10% to keep up with the outflows that we've planned for."

4. What issues do you feel are the most challenging to individual reps over the long term (next three to five years and beyond)?

Raymond James' Curtis speaks with passion on the need for reps—and their broker-dealers—to have both "catastrophic" succession plans and more complete ones. "More clients are starting to ask that question of their advisors," he said. Those end clients "will take things into their own hands and go somewhere else." That's a reaction to an advisor's death or disability that's "not as healthy as having a plan that says 'If something happens to me, you'll be in good hands with this advisor.'" Curtis said RJFS has focused on getting its highest producing advisors to at least draw up and sign one of those catastrophic succession plans; so far 80% "have those documents. These are smart business people," he said. "They know it's the prudent thing to do."

5. Which industry association or entity do you feel is most essential to advancing your point of view, especially in Washington, D.C.?

The answer to this question is clear-cut: the Financial Services Institute, under Dale Brown's leadership, has become the voice of independent broker-dealers over the 10 years of its existence, despite a minority of BDs whose business models more clearly align with SIFMA. Not only are many IBDs members of FSI, but they've put their money where their advocacy mouths are by subsidizing membership of their reps for at least a year; then it's FSI's job to prove the value of reps paying their own membership dues. So far it's working: FSI now counts 35,000 individual reps as members.

6. Are you confident that the independent broker-dealer model will remain viable?

As Curtis of Raymond James said, "If I wasn't optimistic about the business I'm in, I'd be in another business." Still, this was a poll where anonymity was guaranteed, and in past years some BD presidents answered "No" to the question. This is also a business with notoriously thin profit margins that has experienced serious consolidation over the past year or so. This unanimous response should serve as comfort to the reps of the 58 broker-dealers whose leaders not only say in public that they're believers in the IBD model, but do so in private as well.