What Is the Broker Protocol, and Does It Cover Your Move?

What does the Protocol actually say?

The Protocol for Broker Recruiting was signed in 2004 by Citigroup Global Markets (Smith Barney), Merrill Lynch and UBS Financial Services. Its stated goal is to further clients' interests in privacy and freedom of choice when their registered representatives move between firms. Other firms join by signing a one-page joinder agreement and sending it to the administrator, J.S. Held. The text of the Protocol is three pages. Read it yourself: much of what advisors believe about it comes from someone else's summary. It is a private agreement among firms, not an SEC or FINRA rule, and it does not change what those rules require of you or of either firm.

When a registered representative moves between two signatory firms, the Protocol says:

• What you may take. Only the client name, address, phone number, email address and account title of clients you serviced while at the firm. You are prohibited from taking any other documents or information, so account numbers, statements, holdings and balances stay behind.
• How you leave. You resign in writing to local branch management and include a copy of the client information you are taking. The copy you hand in also lists those clients' account numbers. You do not take the account numbers.
• When you may solicit. Only after you have joined the new firm. Your old firm remains free to enforce contractual, statutory or common-law restrictions on soliciting clients before you leave.
• What it protects. If you and the new firm follow it, neither of you has monetary or other liability to the old firm for taking that information or for soliciting those clients. It does not stop the old firm from bringing an action against the new firm for “raiding,” a term the Protocol does not define.
• Good faith. If the old firm disagrees with your list, you are still treated as compliant if you assembled it in good faith and substantially took only information for clients you serviced while at the firm.
• Before you resign. You may give another firm information about your business, other than account statements, as long as it does not reveal who your clients are.

The new firm may use the information only for your solicitation of your former clients, and may not let any other representative use it. A client who wants the old firm to send account numbers or recent statements to the new firm signs an authorization form, and a client who wants to move an account signs a transfer (ACAT) form.

What does the Protocol leave to your own agreements?

More than most advisors expect.

• Moves involving a non-member. If either firm is not a signatory, the Protocol does not apply to the move.
• Teams that split. If a whole team or partnership does not move together, the team agreement decides which clients departing members may take information for and solicit. The Protocol sets one floor: no team agreement can stop you taking information for, or soliciting, clients you introduced to the team. Where there is no written team agreement on the point, the Protocol sets a default. A member who has been on the team in a producing capacity for four years or more may take information for, and solicit, all clients the team serviced. A member with less time is protected only for clients they introduced to the team.
• Accounts from a retiring advisor. Accounts you received through a firm's program for a retiring advisor are governed by the contract among the retiring advisor, you and the firm.
• Stock-plan and IRA rollover program accounts. Accounts under a firm's stock-benefit services agreement or an IRA rollover participation agreement remain subject to those agreements and to any account servicing agreement between you and the firm.
• Privacy law. The Protocol limits how the new firm uses the information so that it complies with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the SEC's Regulation S-P. It does not replace them.
• Everything else you signed. Employment, team, partnership, notice and confidentiality terms are separate documents.

This is general information from the Protocol text, not legal advice. Your own agreements govern, and a securities lawyer should read them before you act on any of this.

Which firms are members, and which large firms have left?

J.S. Held keeps the only official list of signatory firms and updates it weekly. It maintains and distributes the list; it does not give legal advice about the Protocol or police how firms follow it. The list dated October 19, 2026 names more than 2,000 firms with no withdrawal noted. Some of those names belong to firms that have since merged or closed, so the list shows who signed, not who still operates.

Membership belongs to a named legal entity, not a brand, and a firm can join with qualifications. The downloadable list marks which firms have them but does not print their terms. A firm can withdraw at any time, and the Protocol asks it to try to give the other signatories 10 days' written notice.

Status of large firms on the October 19, 2026 list:

Check the current list, not this table. Status and qualifications change, and an affiliate can have a different status from the firm you know. Questions to settle before anything is in motion:

• Which legal entity am I registered with, and is that entity on the list?
• Which entity would I join, and is that entity on the list?
• Does either firm have joinder qualifications, and what do they say? Ask for the text in writing.
• Has either firm given notice of withdrawal?

The wirehouse explainer puts the four large employee firms' status in the context of what a wirehouse is.

How does Protocol status change the way a move is planned?

There are two cases.

Moves happen in both cases. What changes is the order of the steps and how early a lawyer is involved. A move to or from Morgan Stanley or UBS, for example, is outside the Protocol, because both withdrew in 2017.

These FINRA rules and notices bear on a move whatever the Protocol status:

• FINRA Rule 2140 bars a firm from interfering with a customer's request to transfer an account when the customer's registered representative changes firms, unless the account is subject to a lien for money the customer owes or another bona fide claim.
• FINRA Rule 2273 requires the firm you join to give your former customers an educational communication prepared by FINRA when the firm, directly or through you, first contacts them individually about transferring assets, or when they transfer without being contacted.
• Regulatory Notice 19-10 says FINRA expects the old firm to make sure customers know how their accounts will be serviced after their registered representative leaves. The firm may also tell them they can stay or move their assets and, if the departing representative consents, how to reach that representative.
• FINRA Rule 13804 covers a party that goes to court for a temporary injunctive order in an industry dispute. It must file an arbitration claim at the same time, and if the court grants the order, a hearing on permanent relief before three arbitrators must begin within 15 days.
• Your old firm must file a Form U5 within 30 days of ending your registration and give you a copy at the same time (Regulatory Notice 10-39). Read it when it arrives.

What should you settle about your own agreements first?

Protocol status is the second question. The first is what you signed.

• Do I have signed copies of every agreement with my firm, including amendments and any team or partnership agreement?
• What do the notice, non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses say, word for word, and which state's law governs them?
• Does any clause limit accepting business from clients who contact me on their own, not only soliciting them?
• If I am on a team, who signed what, and how long have I been on the team in a producing capacity?
• Which clients did I service at the firm, which did I introduce to a team, and which came through a retiring advisor's program?
• Which accounts sit under a stock-plan or IRA rollover program agreement?
• Has a securities lawyer read the agreements before my next recruiting conversation, not after?

Platform, operations and supervision questions belong in a separate conversation. The Advisor Diligence Question Bank holds them.

When is staying the right answer?

A complicated exit is not a reason to stay, and a clean one is not a reason to go. Protocol status changes how hard leaving is and the order of the steps. It does not change whether your firm still fits.

• Have I tested staying as seriously as leaving, including asking my firm directly for what I am looking for elsewhere?
• If my exit would be contested or slow, does the alternative clear the bar by enough to be worth it?
• Am I treating Protocol coverage as a reason to move now, rather than as one input to the plan?
• If I move, will it hold? Advisor Transition Durability by Channel compares early-exit rates by the channel an advisor left and the one they joined.

If you are earlier in the decision, Switching Broker-Dealers: Questions to Ask First covers the questions that come before this one. Continuum's advisor recruiting work describes how we run that evaluation with an advisor.

Related reading: Financial Advisor Recruiting, Advisor Diligence Question Bank, Switching Broker-Dealers: Questions to Ask First.