OSJs Under Pressure to Do More

Historically, offices of supervisory jurisdiction, or OSJs, provided office space and compliance oversight of registered reps for independent broker/dealers, handling their licensing and registration, acting as a go-between with the brokerage firm and filing the regulatory requirements—all the dry, boring, bureaucratic stuff that most independent reps shunned.

Many advisors realized that if they banded together to create a large OSJ, they could leverage that scale to negotiate better deals for each of them with their broker/dealer, custodian or other vendors. 

But the OSJ space has now diverged, stakeholders say, between those going for pure scale—those with $10 billion or more in assets and more than 100 advisors—and those that have created national brands and provide a significant amount of infrastructure and support to…