Edward Jones Ranks No. 1 in National Survey of Brokers for 2007

December 07, 2007

Edward Jones Ranks No. 1 in National Survey of Brokers For the 15th Consecutive Year

For the 15th consecutive year, Edward Jones ranked No. 1 in Registered Rep. magazine's annual survey of the nation's seven largest financial-services firms. The magazine randomly selects financial advisors nationwide and asks them to rank their firms in various categories.

Edward Jones financial advisors gave the firm the highest scores among its competitors in all but two of the 22 categories in which it was rated. Some of those categories include: hiring and recruiting practices, ongoing training, client account statements, quality of the products offered, and the firm's strategic focus.

Edward Jones financial advisors rated the firm 9.5 points out of a possible 10. The overall average for all firms was 8.2.

"This particular ranking is always gratifying because it represents feedback from our own financial advisors who were surveyed in September and October about their experience at Edward Jones," said Edward Jones Managing Partner James D. Weddle. "Our business model is simple but elegant in the focus it brings to our efforts. We serve the serious, long-term individual investor from conveniently located branches, staffed by a financial advisor. Every resource of our firm is dedicated to building the relationship between our financial advisors and our clients. I appreciate the contribution every one of our branch and home-office associates makes toward that effort. I also want to thank our financial advisors for the honor they have paid us."
When Edward Jones first topped this list in 1992, the firm had only 2,000 branch offices. "Today, we have more than 10,000, but some things never change," Weddle said. "We continue to strive to make Edward Jones a place where one's contributions are valued and respected."
Edward Jones provides financial services for individual investors in the United States and, through its affiliates, in Canada and the United Kingdom. Every aspect of the firm's business, from the types of investment options offered to the location of branch offices, is designed to cater to individual investors in the communities in which they live and work. The firm's 10,000-plus financial advisors work directly with more than 7 million clients to understand their personal goals - from college savings to retirement - and create long-term strategies for their investments which emphasize a well-balanced portfolio and a buy-and-hold strategy. Edward Jones embraces the importance of building long-term, face-to-face relationships with clients, helping them to understand and make sense of the investment options available today.

Parameters used for evaluation:
Work Environment
Freedom from pressure to sell certain products
Realistic sales quotas
Hiring and recruiting practices
Payout
Benefits

Support
Sales support
Quality of sales assistants
Quantity of sales assistants
Quality of sales ideas
Ongoing training
Quote and information system
Quality of operations
Account statements
Product
Quality of research
Fixed-income pricing
Quality of the products offered
Management
Your branch manager
Strategic focus
Overall ethics
Public image

Sources

http://www.stltoday.com/pr/business/PR1207070413106

http://registeredrep.com/mag/finance_edward_jones_whistle/?cid=edward_jones

James Weddle - Managing Partner for Edward Jones.- 2006

Weddle has been a general partner of Edward Jones since 1984 and a member of the partnership's management committee. He began working in the research department at Edward Jones while still at DePauw University. After graduating and then getting his MBA from Washington University in 1977, he moved to Connersville, Ind., and established Edward Jones' 200th branch. He became a partner in sales training in 1984, and in 1985, he took over one of the firm's largest revenue-generating units -- mutual fund sales and marketing. He became a member of the management committee in 1986 and moved to branch administration in 1989, where he was responsible for developing the entire East Coast.

For the past five years, Weddle has been in charge of administration of the company's more than 9,000 branch sales offices, including the identification and development of management talent within the company. At Edward Jones, the managing partner is primarily responsible for running the partnership's business and determining its policies. The managing partner also has the power to appoint and dismiss general partners and to determine the proportion of their respective interests in the partnership.

Edward Jones, with about 9,600 investment representatives, is among the largest financial services firms in the country and one of St. Louis' largest private companies. The firm has 265 general partners, 4,812 limited partners and 153 subordinated limited partners(in 2005).

Within three months of taking over as managing partner at Edward Jones, Jim Weddle announced that the firm is launching a $200 million overhaul of its communications system.
Edward Jones plans to spend at least that much in the next year switching from satellite communications to high-speed, land-based connections.

The technology initiative to connect the firm's more than 9,700 brokers in some 9,300 offices started about 18 months ago but gathered momentum since Weddle, 52, took over as managing partner at the beginning of the year.

Edward Jones is making the move after posting record revenue and earnings for 2005 -- $3.2 billion in revenue and $330 million in earnings, before distributions to partners, up from 2004 revenue of $2.8 billion that produced a $217 million profit.

In a company known for its simple approach to investors, Weddle said he is trying to keep management simple and straightforward in an operation that now has more than 32,000 employees, including more than 4,000 in the St. Louis area at its headquarters in Des Peres and at a campus in Maryland Heights. The April 2006 issue of trade magazine Registered Rep said Weddle still eats with employees in the company cafeteria, parks wherever he finds a vacancy on the Edward Jones lot in Des Peres and has no plans to change the firm's long-standing policy of not selling options and commodities. "Those are more like wagers than investments," Weddle told Registered Rep.

Weddle said he also is committed to beefing up internal communications and will do six live video broadcasts for employees this year. He's fielding more questions from a suggestion box on the company's internal e-mail network.

The new communication system is scheduled to be in place by July 2007 and will bring high-speed Internet connections to every office, plus new computers, a new phone system and new financial software.


Weddle said the new technology will be the backbone of the Edward Jones system to deliver financial information.

Edward Jones was on the cutting edge when it installed the satellite system in 1989, but at that time most of the firm's offices were in rural parts of the country and had no access to other high-speed data communications, said Rich Malone, who oversees information technology and is one of 15 partners on the firm's management committee.

Greg Sullivan, chief executive of Global Velocity, which works with businesses to manage their communications systems, said improved technology in land-based systems gives them advantages over satellites, such as fewer dropped signals and an ability to transmit data faster.
So far, Edward Jones is testing its new Internet technology in 100 branches, and 4,000 offices will have switched from satellite dishes by the end of 2006. The firm expects to sign long-term agreements in the coming weeks with major outside suppliers for telephones, video service and data service. Weddle said it is too early to identify those suppliers. Edward Jones already selected Microsoft products for its e-mail system, and the firm has existing relationships with Hewlett-Packard Co. for computer workstations and Xerox Corp. for desktop printers, and Weddle said those relationships will stay in place.

Sources
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2005/11/07/daily14.html

http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2006/04/10/story1.html

Douglas Hill - Managing Partner - Edward Jones - 2004-05

Doug Hill is stepping down Dec. 31 as part of a settlement the company reached last December with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice following charges that Edward Jones failed to disclose revenue-sharing relationships with mutual fund and college savings plan managers.

http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2005/11/07/daily14.html

Edward Jones - John Buchanan's Strategy

John W. Bachmann, is a senior partner of the Edward Jones securities firm. Bachmann was promoted to managing partner in 1980, where he served for 24 years before stepping down in 2003.

Background of Bachmann

Bachmann attended Wabash College and spent summers interning with Edward Jones. He did simple tasks such as cleaning the basement, taking out trash, and acting as a messenger. After graduating from Wabash, Bachmann enrolled in graduate school at Northwestern. After receiving his MBA, he returned to St. Louis and joined Edward Jones full-time at the company's headquarters. Bachmann quickly realized that to be respected within the organization he had to earn his stripes by working with customers and selling securities. Thus, he moved to Columbia, MO, and spent seven years as a retail-investment representative. He then returned to St. Louis where he served as a general partner responsible for long-range planning and corporate finance. Bachmann was promoted to managing partner in 1980, where he served for 24 years before stepping down in 2003. During his tenure he was able to grow the firm from 300 to 9,000 employees.

John Bachmann's strategy for Edward Jones, which he outlined in his famous 1971 memo, was about focus. He recognized early on that individual investors were an under-served market. Edward Jones didn't have the resources for Investment Banking and institutional research, but saw the value in working with the individual investor.

The company developed a value system that spoke to its target customer, an investment mentality based on safe, long-term growth. In line with this strategy, Edward Jones sold its seat in the futures market, implementing a policy to not trade in any stocks that were trading below $4, and no longer kept an institutional desk. All these actions institutionalized Edward Jones' customer strategy and led to a tighter alignment with the end market.

Edward Jones developed a unique, differentiated strategy for its offices and reps. It puts people out one at a time with one administrative support which allows them to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The Edward Jones office takes on a similar feel to a law office and not a competitive broker. If a new representative is deemed necessary, they will place them across the street rather than have them in the same building." It appears counter intuitive, as it leaves out opportunities for efficiencies, but Bachman claims that you get a different kind of worker-a high achiever who does not necessarily work well within groups, but is capable of bringing in more revenues, and is driven by having accountability for his location. In growing the business, the firm also concentrated on making significant investments in two areas: training people and and technology. The firm recognized early on that these two areas would have the most significant impact on increasing productivity.

Bachmann stresses the strong belief in the importance of responsibility-based management, which is a system based on trust that gives employees freedom, clarity, and inspires their drive to achieve. He characterized the old command and control model as "stupid," even if it still exist in many firms today. Due to this philosophy, Edward Jones' received No. 1 ranking in Fortune's annual "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" in 2002 and 2003.

Bachmann was proud of Edward Jones' ability to remain a private partnership, and this capability is result of the success of the strategy. Edward Jones management had strategy that created a business (from a capital standpoint) that was self sustaining, which allowed the firm to stay as a partnership without the need for outside capital. According to bachman, partnerships keep pressure off short-term focus."

Edward Jones had a huge competitive advantage early because the competition did not take them seriously. Competition perceived them as rural, agricultural, backwoods.

In referring to the memo he wrote in 1971, Bachmann states, "Nothing has changed from then to now. We still live by those same ideals, we have just fulfilled many of the goals we had set out."

Bachmann said much of the credit for the company's success belongs to the investment representatives.
"We're a story about 9,000 entrepreneurs (In 2002) , men and women who still want to do things for themselves," he said. "They have accountability for their locations in terms of making them a successful enterprise and that appeals to very high achievers."
Another key to success is finding the right niche. For Edward Jones, that is not online trading or serving institutions or selling proprietary investment products. It's the storefront single-broker operation that has served the company since well before Bachmann started there.
"Michael Porter says there's more than one right way to succeed in an endeavor and we have found the right way to be successful," Bachmann said.

Bachmann oversees the fourth-largest privately owned company in the St. Louis area, with $149.2 million in income on $2.1 billion in revenue in 2001.

THE BOOK THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE

In 1973, picked up management guru Peter Drucker's newly published Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices and later adopted it as the bible for Edward Jones. Hired Drucker as a consultant in 1981, a relationship that continues to this day.

Sources

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2002/06/17/focus1.html?page=2

http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2006/04/24/News/Edward.Jones.Protagonist.Talks.About.Strategy.Values-1867564.shtml

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_23/b3786097.htm

For history of Edward Jones visit

http://smis-usa.blogspot.com/2008/02/edward-jones-history.html