Senior officials of 10 brokerage firms that sell through banks have scheduled a meeting next month with a leading securities trade group.
The gathering, in which the brokerage executives will meet with officials from the Securities Industry Association, is seen as the prelude to the formation of a specialized trade group or subgroup, said Brewster M. Ellis, president of the financial institutions division of Robert Thomas Securities, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Mr. Ellis is acting as the leader of the brokerage firms that will attend the meeting. These brokerages are called third-party marketers, since they sell investments on banks' behalf.
Mr. Ellis explained that the marketers are interested in forming a committee within an existing trade group or establishing a trade group of their own.
The Securities Industry Association is only one of the trade groups with which the marketers are considering allying. They also have scheduled a meeting on March 6 with the Bank Securities Association, Corte Madera, Calif.
The marketers' goal is to obtain a stronger voice in lobbying regulators and in discussing issues of importance to their business.
Lobbying regulators is seen as especially crucial, since organizations including the National Association of Securities Dealers are eying tighter restrictions on investment sales through banks.
"We need to get our collective voice heard," Mr. Ellis said. "Whether it was by default or not, we have not (yet) spoken together."
A senior Securities Industry Association official said the trade group wants to accommodate the marketers.
"We're providing a forum to hear what marketers have on their mind," said Robert F. Gannon, the securities association's director of program services.
Other marketing firms that have agreed to send officials to the Securities Industry Association meeting include Sentra Securities Corp., San Diego, and Investment Centers of America, Bismarck, N.D.
The marketers started working together in November, when representatives of 30 of the brokerages met in Chicago to put together an informal group called the "ad-hoc committee of third-party marketers."
