Full Service Brokers Review

What is a full service stock broker?

 Also called traditional brokers, these brokers are known to offer more than just investing in stocks. Besides offering basic market transaction facilities, traditional stock brokers in India offers you a comprehensive bouquet of services to cater to most of your financial requirements.

In combination, wealth management and tax advisory services may help you enhance your assets and save taxes on sustained profits in the most remarkable ways. Their service portfolio may also include offerings to take care of your depository needs. The made-to-order and assorted nature of the services asks for the involvement of subject matter experts. For this, full-service brokers often feature a large in-house team of very skilled researchers and market analysts. They serve you with acumen in the form of market research reports and advisories. As all these elements add to their organizational expenses, the same increases their fees.

Services offered by full service brokers

• Investment Advisory Services: These brokers provide highly tailor-made investment advisory services to customers on how much to invest, when and where to invest. Not many folks are prepared to comprehend the shades of the Stock Market; thus, they leverage from these advisory services so that they can grow their capital with minimum risk. The full service stock brokers provide both intraday and positional advisory services to their clients to keep them stay on top of stock market information.
• Dedicated Relationship Manager: This is certainly a big plus investors get after getting associated with a full service broker. Investing in a stock market is very complex as there are hundreds of thousands of stocks to choose from. This is where having a dedicated relationship manager is a big advantage for investors who can choose to discuss every single point with him or her. Though it comes at a price, this is certainly of great value for investors who want to get the best value out of their time, efforts and investment.
• Research & Analytics: Most people don’t have enough time and expertise to invest in performing research and check to trend as to which stocks are shifting towards profitability and which of them are moving down. This is where the need for stock brokers emerges. Most Brokers also have a devoted Research & Analytics team whose task is to unceasingly cull out data of prevailing market conditions, compare and prepare popular stocks, and do full-fledged analysis about the prospect and pointlessness of various shares. They would usually share with their customers daily reports, annual reports and monthly reports as well so that the customers can make calculative decisions.
• Portfolio Management Services (PMS): PMS or Portfolio Management Service is a professional service where skilled and experienced portfolio managers supported by a research team manage equity portfolios on behalf of clients instead of clients managing on their own. PMS providers invest straight in securities through attentive portfolios. Contrary to mutual funds, the investors’ assets here are not pooled into one large fund. So, Aditya’s account will be kept distinct and run according to his investment mandate in a flexible PMS, where an investment manager takes all decisions in-sync with investor’s objectives.
• Financial Planning, Tax Consultations & Retirement Planning: Full Service brokers also offer different types of personalized consultations to their clients so that they can manage their investments easily and profitably.
• Leverage on equity delivery: There are many full service brokers in India that offer leverage on equity delivery. It is also known as margin funding. However, there are many that do not offer these services either because the account sizes are very small or due to the lack of right information. To provide margin funding facility it also requires more human resources thereby making it unfeasible for small amounts spread across too many clients. Nonetheless, the compliance requirements for Margin Funding are a bit complex.

A full-service broker evaluates its client’s existing liabilities and assets as well as his upcoming income and expenses. The broker will look at income sources such as wages and salaries, legacy, employee achievement awards, and child support payments. Other bases of income include health savings accounts, sick pay benefits, and deferred payments. The broker also looks at the client’s future expenditures, including mortgage payments, credit card debt, parental care, and college tuition. Clients fix on whether to get involved in finalizing securities, examining the investment portfolio, and coming up with a strategy. Some clients need more guidance while others look for advice on specific issues.

Some of the leading full service brokers in India are:

Besides helping their clients in carrying out trading transactions, the Full Service Brokers go an extra mile and help the customer in other areas too such as Financial Guidance, Retirement planning, Research and analytics, Advisory services, etc. This way they could retain their customers and try for more and more diffusion in the market.

The Full Service Brokers also offer a wide range of products and services to the customers and hence the customers are tempted to invest through them.  Full-Service Brokers are known to be registered themselves with multiple Stock Exchanges like NSE, BSE, NSDL, MCDEX, CDSL, etc.

They register with multiple Stock exchanges basis the specific segments that they trade-in. For instance, for equities, they would need to register in BSE or NSE or MSEI and for the commodity, they should register with MCX and NCDEX.

A majority of full service brokers offer an extensive variety of products and services to their customers. They are supposed to deal with the end-to-end customer life cycle in regard to his investment portfolio and wealth management. They are associated with the investors on a personal basis to offer modified solutions.

Products offered by full service brokers

These full service brokers offer a wide range of products to their clients including:

• Equity
• Derivatives
• Commodity
• Currency
• Future
• IPOs
• Repository Services
• Mutual funds
• Insurance Products
• Retirement Plans
• Bonds and Debentures
• Capital Gain Bonds
• NCDs
• Corporate FDs

More about full service brokers

Though products & services and products are not completely unvarying and costs usually differ from firm to firm, typically you should want some or all of the following from your full-service broker:

• Portfolio management services
• Advisory
• Access to initial public offerings
• Opportunities to invest in certain private equity or hedge funds
• Retirement planning
• Dedicated relationship manager
• Access to unique and proprietary research on stocks and bonds

To open a Demat and trading account, you would need to help of a stock broker. There are hundreds of processes involved in the transfer and settlement of stocks for a suitable buying and selling experience of the investors. Hence, stockbrokers play a pivotal role, along with the stock exchanges and regulators. In general, you’ll need a stockbroker to trade in stocks.

A majority of full service brokers charge a nominal fee for the Demat Account opening; while some also offer this at zero cost. Some Brokers also charge an annual maintenance charge for the Demat Account.

Full service broker account opening process

• The initial step is to determine the full service stock broker you want to align with. It is recommended to detailed research about the broker like its charges, services offered, products, brokerage and other types of charges, etc so that you don’t face any level of confusion at a later stage.
• Most stockbrokers have online registration and application procedure available these days. You can register online and fill up the application form for the Trading as well as Demat account online on your own.
• Provide basic details like your full name, residential and office address, mobile and landline numbers and email id, etc
• If facility available, upload the documents online.
• When your details are received at the bank’s end, the bank will assign a person to call you and confirm whether you are actually interested in going ahead with the Trading and Demat Account. The representative is supposed to clear any doubts if you have regarding anything.
• Many broking houses also have to conduct an In-Person verification as a mandate by SEBI before opening up the Demat Account. When the in-person verification is not feasible, they propose a video call or a skype call
• After all this, the total turnaround time taken for your Demat and training accounts to be opened will be a maximum of 4-5 working days.

How to choose a full service broker?

The most preferred approach is to prepare a list of facilities and then align it with the offerings from the full-service brokers. Some important points are described below.

• Costs – Compare brokerage and other charges that are being incurred. The broker must recompense more charges with extra facilities and services.
• Facilities – Inspect the offered facilities. Pick the one who’s offered facilities match your requirements. If you are a trader chose with features with day trading facilities at a reasonable cost. On the other side, if you are an investor choose the one with the low brokerage.
• Minimum trades – Always check for clause or sub-clause about minimum trades. In the case of 3-in-1 accounts, there are instructions for minimum balance on the saving account. A 3-in-1 account is made up of de-mat, trading, and a saving account.
• Investment choices – Apart from stocks, if you are interested in mutual funds, IP, FPO, insurance products, or other investment products, you must keep a check on offered products. Also, check and compare costs linked with such options and do not forget to negotiate with them.
• Research – This is an additional service that helps customers check research reports on companies or preferred sectors. Clients can access data on companies as well. Traders can get trading tips as well on finalized instruments.
• Customer service – Always consider studying customer reviews online on social media and discussion forums before taking your final call. These reviews are meant to provide deep insight on the quality of services provided by brokers.
• Local office – A visit to the local branch or a sub-broking office of the broker is always a good idea in case of choosing a full-service broker. You can visit the office in case of any confusion.

Are full service stockbrokers good for long-term investment?

For those looking to take their investment to a new level, particularly for long-term horizon, banking on the expertise of full service stockbrokers is a great decision.

Their wide spectrum of services along with dedicated research reports, investment guidance, valuable tips are all supposed to help investors leverage the power of the burgeoning stock market in a long-term basis.

Are full service stockbrokers viable for intraday trading?

In this case, it is recommended to choose discount brokers as intraday day usually refers to trading done within a day to make quick profits. The full service brokers charge a certain percentage per trade. This tends to make intraday trading very expensive for an investor.

FAQs – Full Service Brokers Review