One of the most closely watched report cards in the fight to recruit and retain financial advisor talent offered a fresh reminder of how critical that competition is to the industry’s future.
Commonwealth Financial Network, Stifel, Raymond James, Edward Jones and Cambridge Investment Research drew the highest scores on research and consulting firm J.D. Power’s annual advisor satisfaction study, the company said July 16. As shown in the below rankings, the grades for Merrill, Wells Fargo Advisors, Cetera Financial Group, LPL Financial and the Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network came in below average in their respective employee and independent advisor channels of the industry. Compared to the firms’ ratings from 2024, the grades for Osaic improved the most, while those of Merrill tumbled by the largest amount.
In an indication of how seriously the largest wealth management firms take J.D. Power’s study, Commonwealth and Stifel issued press releases trumpeting the fact that they are perennial champions of the survey. That’s because the results “can be helpful in attracting other advisors” and, for the firms, winning the top marks is “something that they’re justifiably very proud of,” said recruiter Mark Elzweig of Mark Elzweig Company.
“There’s an intense demand now to attract and retain good financial advisors. Most firms are very interested in making sure that their advisors are very happy and going to stay there,” Elzweig said. “These are very valuable employees. Each one is a mini revenue center, so firms want them to be happy with the whole team and want them to stay.”
With so many general and highly specific issues motivating each advisor’s choices, firms face heavy challenges related to looming successions, retirements and the projected shortage of talent to meet future client demand. More than a quarter, 26%, of the nearly 3,700 advisors participating in J.D. Power’s survey said they’re at least 65 years old, and 46% told pollsters they plan to retire within the next decade. Unfortunately for the firms, some of those advisors gave their current firms low grades in areas like technology, leadership, operational resources and professional development.
“The wealth management industry is experiencing a significant generational shift in which the demographics, ways of working and priorities of both clients and advisors are changing rapidly,” Mike Foy, the managing director of J.D. Power’s wealth management practice, said in a statement. “How firms manage this transformation and the investments they make today in technology and branding will be critical to attracting, developing and retaining the next generation of advisors, and they will also set the stage for how their firms are perceived by the influx of new, younger clients now considering professional advice for the first time.”
Amid the many dynamics that affect recruiting, the fact that Stifel “doesn’t have an unwieldy size” enables an “ease of access” to senior management and other corporate staff and resources that appeals to many advisors, Elzweig said. For Stifel, this year marks its third in a row on top of the employee-channel advisor satisfaction rankings.
And Commonwealth — which is slated to change hands later this year under LPL’s deal to acquire its smaller rival for $2.7 billion — prevailed in the independent channel for the 12th straight time. LPL is seeking to fend off rivals’ many pitches to Commonwealth advisors ahead of their expected transition by the middle of 2026.
“Since Commonwealth has been such a highly ranked firm consistently for so many years,” Elzweig said, “they’re going to come into the merger as demanding customers with high expectations. That’s what I get from that.”
Scroll down the slideshow below to see which firms came in at the top and bottom of J.D. Power’s advisor satisfaction rankings in 2025.
For results from prior years, see our slideshows from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017. To see J.D. Power’s latest annual study ranking firms for full-service and do-it-yourself investor satisfaction, click here.
Note: The J.D. Power U.S. Financial Advisor Satisfaction Study measures the responses of 3,698 employee and independent advisors between December 2024 and April 2025. For each firm with at least 100 participating advisors, the research consultant releases a satisfaction index score on a 1,000-point scale based on six factors: “compensation; firm leadership and culture; operational support; products and marketing; professional development; and technology.”
