Charles Schwab
Starting our list is the very famous Charles Schwab. At last count, this firm had more than
36.2 million brokerage accounts and 5 million workplace plan participant accounts. And then there are nearly 2 million deposit accounts through Schwab Bank, another unit of this very large financial conglomerate.
Schwab got its start a little later than Fidelity. Founded by Charles Schwab in 1971 in San Francisco as Commander Industries, Inc., the purpose of the business was to conduct securities broking and to publish a newsletter entitled Schwab Investment Indicator. The brokerage house still publishes a quarterly investing periodical (entitled OnInvesting).
Charles Schwab the person remains chairman of the company today. It is headquartered in Westlake, Texas, although it has several branch offices in San Francisco and several hundred throughout the world. Most of these locations are in the United States.
One of Schwab’s (the person and the company) claims to fame is its move towards lower and lower fees. Long before Robinhood and the Internet, Schwab started slashing commissions in the late 1970s after the New York Stock Exchange allowed member firms to charge any commissions they wished.
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Fidelity Investments
Up next in our list of the largest broker-dealers in the United States is Fidelity Investments with more than 51.5 million
accounts, a staggering number by any standard.
Fidelity got its start in 1943 when Edward C. Johnson II was elected president of the Fidelity Fund. Since then, Fidelity has grown into one of the largest asset managers on the planet. Remarkably, it is still a private company with Edward’s granddaughter Abigail Johnson serving as CEO today.
Fidelity was founded in Boston and remains headquartered there today. Although this New England city is the hub of the company, there are more than 200 Fidelity branch locations through the United States with another 13 offices outside the U.S. Fidelity employs more than 68,000 people, another testament to the sheer size of this very large brokerage firm.
Vanguard
Third in line is Vanguard. This famous investing company boasts more than 50 million customers, many of
whom are loyal to the firm’s emphasis on low-cost index investing. This form of financial management was pioneered by the company’s founder John C. Bogle, who started Vanguard in 1974.
Like Schwab and Fidelity, Vanguard manages its own family of mutual and exchange-traded funds. These funds are in the trillions of dollars, an astonishing fact that represents the enormous size of this Pennsylvania-based company. The average expense ratio for Vanguard’s funds is just 8 basis points, a fact that reflects the company’s continued emphasis on low-cost investing.
Vanguard is the first, but not the last, firm in our list of largest broker-dealers without any branch locations. Despite its online-only presence, it manages to conduct both brokerage and investment-advisory businesses.
Vanguard is also unique in its ownership structure. The company is owned by its 423 funds, which are in turn owned by their shareholders.
J.P. Morgan
Fourth on our list is J.P. Morgan. With millions of customers and trillions of dollars in custody, this large brokerage firm caters to both retail and institutional clients. On the retail side alone, it has roughly $4 trillion in client assets at last count. Its sister company Chase Bank has similar numbers (millions of accounts and trillions of dollars in client assets). Combined with its banking unit, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is one of the largest financial-services companies in the world. It is headquartered in New York City.
Morgan Stanley/E*Trade
Rounding out the top five is Morgan Stanley and its online discount broker E*Trade. Combined, these two
investment firms have more than $2.7 trillion in client assets
through brokerage, investment-advisory, and workplace channels.
E*Trade was acquired by Morgan Stanley in 2020, giving the parent company a large self-directed retail operation to complement its investment banking, wealth management, and institutional services. The company is headquartered in Times Square in New York City.
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Merrill
Up next is Merrill. Combined of the traditional firm Merrill Lynch and the online discount firm Merrill
Edge, this investing company is owned by Bank of America, which creates yet another huge financial-services
company (just slightly behind JPMorgan Chase & Co.). Merrill Edge has more than 3.7 million accounts that make up roughly $320 billion in assets. That’s an average of about $107,000 per account.
Robinhood
Next on our list is Robinhood. The brokerage house had slightly more than $139.7 billion in client assets
under custody, which isn’t a huge number, judged by the other firms in our survey. However, the company has
more than 24.8 million accounts, which is a very significant
number, especially given the company’s recent founding in 2013. And the numbers are growing.
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Webull
An even newer brokerage firm on the scene is Webull. Founded in 2017, this investment firm has more than
20 million registered users around the globe today. These
customers have deposited more than $60 billion in assets across both
brokerage and robo accounts. This phenomenal rate of growth has led to a planned IPO on the Nasdaq
exchange in the second half of 2025. Expected valuation is around $400 million.
Headquartered on Wall Street in New York City, Webull is owned by a Chinese holding company. It operates
multiple subsidiaries around the world, notably in Hong Kong and Singapore. An HK-based account can trade
Chinese A-shares on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, an exciting service that’s hard to find
elsewhere.
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Updated on 1/6/2025.
Chad Morris is a financial writer with more than 20 years experience
as both an English teacher and an avid trader. When he isn’t writing
expert content for Brokerage-Review.com, Chad can usually be found
managing his portfolio or building a new home computer.