The brokerages with the most account closures
According to research released today by Cogent, affluent Americans are closing brokerage accounts an increasing clip: 13% of affluent individuals closed at least one account in the last 12 months, more than twice the pace of account closures in the previous five years.
Cogent, which will release the full findings of its “Investor Brandscape” report later this month, found that investors are typically closing their accounts for four main reasons: Consolidation, rollovers, fees – and of course, they need the money.
The end result, Cogent revealed, is that that total number of investment accounts dropped from 3.54 per household in 2009 to 3.29 accounts in 2010. What firms were the most affected by these developments? These are the top 9, according to Cogent, which ranked these firms by the percentage of affluent investors who reported that they shut down an account in the last 12 months.