Broker to Banker

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Your Broker to Banker

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In particular, once the cost of stock trades dropped to deep-discount levels, brokerages began to offer other services, possibly in an attempt to develop other revenue streams, but certainly as a way to attract customers. As the Internet and MBSD has changed the landscape of the brokerage industry, it has also led to some changes in the way that brokers function. Does it now make sense to dump your broker to banker and rely exclusively on your broker? And customers, for their part, have begun to investigate whether their broker can now serve the functions that were previously carried out by their banker.

Let's look first at some of the services offered by brokerages. Come tax time, assuming that your broker is online, you've already got all your securities information -- no more asking a brokerage's secretary to pull confirmation slips out of their files since you accidentally used yours to plug that broker to banker back in December. You can write checks on your account and you can use a VISA debit card at any ATM. You have your securities (stock) accounts there, so there's a nice feeling of consolidation.