Fine is the hardest place to leave from. Nothing is broken enough to force a decision, so the workarounds become the workflow, the requests you gave up on stop occurring to you, and another year goes by with the same workarounds still in place. Hear it straight from Chad Cristo in 79 seconds.
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Your answers go to Chad Cristo and nobody else. IFG does not contact your current firm.
Most advisors who watch this aren’t. It’s 90 seconds to know what your options actually are.
No deck, no follow-up sequence. If IFG isn’t right for your practice, Chad will say so.
“As an independent advisor, I had a choice. I reviewed numerous Broker-Dealers before deciding to partner with IFG, and it's been the best decision for my career. With IFG's support and guidance, I've developed a legacy firm. I love being independent, yet not alone. I am proud to be part of the IFG family and thank Dave, Scott, and the IFG family for their support.”
Kyle & Melissa · IFG Advisor, Arizona“My extreme pleasure from my association with Independent Financial Group is due to the entire organization sharing a common vision with its representatives. That has been our mutual success.”
“Hard to believe it’s been six years since we have joined the IFG family. Top rate professional and caring service team always ready to respond to needs. Conferences are top notch. Family oriented with great educational content. Consultants, management specialists, product specialists, asset management and insurance resources. A complete suite. Couldn’t ask for more in a broker dealer. Great family environment. Hats off to the management team and principals Scott, Joe and Dave.”
“Since we joined the IFG family, I am consistently reminded of how cooperative and helpful IFG is of our business. Those reminders are not slogans and mission statements included at the tops of letters or the bottoms of emails. They are a real help on important matters when and where we need them. Our business supports our clients, and IFG supports our business. We are very happy to have a partner so clearly interested in helping us all grow together.”
“I joined IFG 18 years ago, and, thanks to you, every Christmas has been a great Christmas because of all you’ve done for the organization. It has been said that “gratitude is a short-lived emotion,” but that has not been the case for me.”
“I have been with four broker-dealers over my 36 year career, including my own. I have now been with IFG for 14 years and could not be more pleased with the character and quality of the firm. They are committed to excellence and integrity, focusing on the important values in our industry rather than their profits. I am delighted to be associated with such a first-rate, high-class firm!”
Independent rankings from Financial Advisor, Financial Planning and InvestmentNews.
Independent Financial Group, LLC. A broker-dealer headquartered in San Diego, independent and privately held for more than 30 years, member FINRA/SIPC. 625+ affiliated advisors. 240,000+ accounts nationwide. $40 billion in assets under advisement. We are not the largest firm in this industry and we do not open conversations by claiming to be. What we are is a firm with 625+ affiliated advisors and 240,000+ accounts nationwide that has stayed independent and privately held for more than 30 years. Those figures are IFG's own, published by the firm. The rankings further down are third parties', with the publication and the year attached. Check both before you spend a minute on the phone.
IFG is the broker-dealer behind an independent practice. The advisor runs the business. The firm carries the parts of this business that belong to a firm. Here is what that covers, in roughly the order it tends to matter, along with the question worth pressing Chad on in each case. One note before you read further: the advisor quotes on this page are verbatim, published by IFG, and reflect those individuals' own experience. They are not a promise, a prediction, or an indication of what any other advisor's experience or results would be.
625+ advisors are affiliated with IFG, and IFG holds the broker-dealer responsibilities that go with that: supervision, compliance review, licensing, and the regulatory machinery that has to be correct every single day, across 240,000+ accounts nationwide. Member FINRA/SIPC. None of that is a glamorous sentence. It is the sentence that quietly decides what your week looks like and how much of it goes to firm business instead of client work. Ask Chad to walk you through exactly how the affiliation is documented, before you commit to anything.
Operations, paperwork and account service sit on the firm side of the line. Every broker-dealer says its support is excellent, including this one, so treat the claim the way you would treat any other unverified one. The only way to test that claim at any firm is to ask what actually happens to a question after you send it, and to whom. Larry, an advisor in California, described his own experience this way: "Hard to believe it's been six years since we have joined the IFG family. Top rate professional and caring service team always ready to respond to needs. Conferences are top notch. Family oriented with great educational content. Consultants, management specialists, product specialists, asset management and insurance resources. A complete suite. Couldn't ask for more in a broker dealer. Great family environment. Hats off to the management team and principals Scott, Joe and Dave." That is one advisor's experience of the firm, not a description of what anyone else's would be. On the call, ask Chad who you would actually reach on a Tuesday afternoon when something has gone sideways, and what that person's name is.
If you could not state precisely, in writing, who controls what you have built and what happens to it when you step back, that is a conversation worth having at your current firm as well as this one. It belongs in writing at both. This is a conversation about control and continuity, not projections.
A move is a project, and in Chad's experience the thing that keeps most advisors where they are is rarely loyalty. It is bandwidth. What Chad can do in 15 minutes is describe what the plan involves, what sequence it runs in, who is responsible for which piece, and what genuinely lands on you and your team, so you are weighing a real process instead of the worst case you have been carrying around for years. Nobody can promise you a specific outcome and IFG will not try.
Independent financial advisors and advisor teams, usually 10 to 30 years in, running a book that took a long time to build. Some are at a wirehouse, some at a bank, many at another independent broker-dealer. In Chad's experience, almost none of them arrive angry. They arrive carrying one specific frustration they have not raised at their own firm, usually because there was never an obvious person to raise it with. This page is not written for someone just starting out, or for anyone who wants to be managed. It fits professionals who already know how to run their business and want the firm behind them to be substantial, privately held, and reachable.
The problem is rarely that an advisor cannot find another firm. It is that weighing one is a real disruption, and the questions that would actually settle it are rarely the ones a recruiting page answers. Here is the evidence in one place, stated once. None of it is a promise about your practice.
#2 Privately Held Broker-Dealers by Gross Revenue and #15 Top Independent Broker-Dealers by Gross Revenue (Financial Advisor, 2025 IBD Ranking). 5-Star Broker-Dealer (InvestmentNews, 2024). Runner-Up, Broker-Dealer of the Year (InvestmentNews Awards, 2025). Top 10 Highest Assets Increase Overall (InvestmentNews, 2024). #1 Women as a Percentage of Producing Reps (Financial Planning, IBD Elite 2025). #7 San Diego's Fastest Growing Private Companies by Revenue (San Diego Business Journal, 2022 and 2023). 8x winner, Fastest Growing Private Companies (Inc. 5000). Every one of those is a third party's scoring, with the publication and the year attached, so you do not have to take this firm's word for it. Each ranking reflects that publication's own criteria for the year shown, applies to Independent Financial Group, LLC as a firm, and is not an indication of future results or of any individual advisor's experience.
$40 billion in assets under advisement. 240,000+ accounts nationwide. 625+ affiliated advisors. Bigger is not automatically better, and that is a fair question to put to any firm, this one included. The figures are here so you can settle whether IFG is substantial enough to be taken seriously, and then decide for yourself whether it is the right size for the way you actually work.
More than 30 years, independent and privately held. Ownership is not a feature anyone can put in a brochure, but it is what determines who a firm answers to when a decision gets difficult and how fast an answer comes back. Whatever firm you are weighing, ask who owns it, how long that has been true, and who would have to approve a change in direction. Then ask IFG the same three questions. It is a short answer at any firm, including your current one.
Kyle & Melissa, Arizona: "As an independent advisor, I had a choice. I reviewed numerous Broker-Dealers before deciding to partner with IFG, and it's been the best decision for my career. With IFG's support and guidance, I've developed a legacy firm. I love being independent, yet not alone. I am proud to be part of the IFG family and thank Dave, Scott, and the IFG family for their support." Arthur, California: "I have been with four broker-dealers over my 36 year career, including my own. I have now been with IFG for 14 years and could not be more pleased with the character and quality of the firm. They are committed to excellence and integrity, focusing on the important values in our industry rather than their profits. I am delighted to be associated with such a first-rate, high-class firm!" Chris, Ohio: "My extreme pleasure from my association with Independent Financial Group is due to the entire organization sharing a common vision with its representatives. That has been our mutual success." Individual experiences, quoted verbatim and unedited from advisors currently affiliated with IFG, who received no compensation for these statements. They are not a promise, a prediction, or an indication of what any other advisor's experience or results would be.
You already know whether the firm you are at now is the one you finish at. Nothing about your practice has to change for you to have one honest conversation about it. Take it with the door closed, ask the questions you have never asked anyone at your own firm, and decide afterward, or decide nothing at all. The one version that changes nothing is the one where another year goes by, the workarounds are still the workflow, and you never asked the question.
Book a confidential 15 minutesIf IFG is not the right fit for your practice, Chad would rather say so on the call than after it. Confidential. 15 minutes with Chad Cristo. Nothing is mailed to your office and no one at your current firm is contacted about this conversation. Independent Financial Group, LLC, 12671 High Bluff Drive, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92130. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisor statements on this page are individual experiences quoted verbatim and are not a representation of any other advisor's experience.