For financial advisors at brokerages, compensation comes down to payout — the difference between their production and what they pay to their employers for services and infrastructure.
And the average payout at the 10 independent brokerages below jumped by a higher percentage last year than at any other firms that are part of Financial Planning's annual IBD Elite rankings. In terms of the annual rise in the quotient of the firms' total payouts, divided by the number of registered representatives who produced revenue in 2025, giants such as Osaic, Northwestern Mutual and MassMutual's MML Investors Services joined midsize firms like LaSalle St. Securities, Centaurus Financial and Geneos Wealth Managements as the leaders in the channel. Of course, every advisor's exact payout comes down to any number of factors.
But industry experts always agree that advisors' tenure in the industry or at a given firm represents a very important driver of their compensation, and that any company trying to prepare for the future must create a career path that can successfully retain top advisor talent.
At Omaha, Nebraska-based registered investment advisory firm Stevens Capital Partners, the team led by founder David Stevens coaches incoming advisors on the firm's systems, meetings process, onboarding and investment strategy as part of a process he calls "the SCP way," he said. Since Stevens launched the firm in 2020 with about $100 million in client assets, it has added more than a half dozen advisors and reached $800 million — with the help of "a career growth track" for young people and career changers joining the team, he noted.
"They don't have to necessarily go out there and prospect because of the way that we are driving business. They just have to be wonderful practitioners," Stevens said. "They determine the time horizon that it will take to get from Point A to Point B."
The firm also hires interns, and Stevens speaks with aspiring planners often through the Financial Planning Association. Those types of conversations are growing more pivotal to the industry's future each year, amid thousands of looming advisor retirements in the next decade.
"What I encourage students to do is write down what excites them, what motivates them and then get all of their questions answered," he said. "I would say, 'Just go and have a conversation with someone about it who is actually successful in that field."
Scroll down the slideshow for the ranking of the 10 independent brokerages with the biggest payout growth in wealth management. Find last year's ranking here. And see other features from this year's edition of Financial Planning's IBD Elite series:
- The cryptic costs of clearing and custody for advisors
- Printable PDF of FP's 2026 IBD Elite rankings
- Deep dive into independent wealth manager data
- 5 independent brokerage executives on clearing and custody
- The 15 largest independent brokerages in wealth management
- The firms with the largest percentage of women advisors
- The 10 fastest growing independent brokerages
Notes: The companies below are ranked by the percentage of increase in their average financial advisor payout between 2025 and the prior year, as reported by the companies themselves. FP relies on each firm to state their annual metrics accurately, and each figure is rounded (other than the percentage of average payout increase year-over-year). The industry term "producing representative" refers to the firms' most accurate count of financial advisors with the brokerage or RIA.
