A typical IB office handles about 230 accounts. Some offices which specialize in certain markets or service specific types of clients, service as few as 40 or 50 customers per year. In general, about two-thirds of the total number of customers listed on the IB’s books are active. The other one-third are occasional or seasonal traders.

Most IB offices do not establish a minimum account size. This is particularly true for those IBs working with hedge accounts.

About 40 percent of the IBs responding said there were less than 500 trades transacted per month by their office. On the other end of the spectrum, about 25 percent reported their IB did over 2500 round-turn trades each month.

Twenty percent transact 501 to 1,000 trades with the remainder transacting between 1,000 to 2,500 trades monthly.

Twenty-six IBs reported the commission charge to their customer was less than $25 per round turn, exclusive of fees. Only five IBs said they charge over $100 per transaction. The average commission charged by full-service IBs to customers for futures transactions is about $65 per round turn.

FX offices charge commissions in a variety of ways often depending on volume of trading or amount of customer funds on deposit in an account.





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