More Financial Advisors Using ETFs than Ever Before, According to New Advisor Intelligence Tool from Broadridge and Cogent Reports

 LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., June 29, 2015 – More than three-quarters of financial advisors are using ETFs in their investment strategies. This is the highest number in history, according to Advisor Intelligence - the industry’s most comprehensive intelligence tool for asset managers to understand the investment approaches of financial advisors.

Advisor Intelligence reveals industry trends on advisor use of mutual funds and ETFs. Advisor use of fund products is changing. According to Broadridge and Cogent Reports data:

• The RIA channel is the strongest user of ETFs, while the independent broker-dealer channel is the largest user of actively managed mutual funds
• More advisors are selling ETFs – 76% are doing so, up from 68% two years ago 
• Overall, ETF assets under management are up $167 billion year-to-date as of May 31
• New products like smart beta ETFs are increasingly attractive to advisors, especially in the retail channels driven by advisors
• Advisors are increasingly driving mutual fund sales for small and medium defined contribution plan business

“As the financial services industry becomes more specialized, and asset fee-based advisors drive the growth of assets under management, the need for market segmentation and targeted sales is more important than ever,” said Frank Polefrone, senior vice president of Broadridge’s Access Data product suite. “Through our partnership with Cogent, we’ve combined product information with ongoing market research to not only identify the products that advisors are likely to buy, but also the best way to engage with the advisor to close sales.”

Advisor Intelligence, a unique tool created by Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) and Cogent Research, a division of Market Strategies International, links three critical types of information not commonly available through a single source: product data, firm profiles, and attitudinal preferences - giving asset managers the ability to pinpoint their marketing and sales activities to support advisors.

Advisor Intelligence transforms raw data and adds behavior insights to create a breakthrough capability for asset managers to understand what trades are occurring, where and how their products are being sold, and the communication preferences of advisors who are selling them. The new application combines Broadridge fund and ETF data with Cogent’s advisor segmentation data to generate powerful profiles of more than 250,000 advisors nationwide.

“Until now, approaches to advisor segmentation have tended to be quite broad in nature,” said John Meunier, managing director, Cogent Reports. “This partnership combines trading information in our behavior models to improve the predictability of key segments, to more efficiently build the bridge between asset managers and advisors.”