What is the Broker Protocol, and what can you actually take when you leave?

The short answer: The Broker Protocol is a voluntary agreement between member firms that sets the rules for what a departing financial advisor may take when moving from one member firm to another. The signed Protocol text permits exactly five pieces of client information — client name, address, phone number, email address, and account title — and only for the clients you personally serviced. Everything beyond those five fields, including account numbers and statements, stays behind with the firm.

Key facts

• Created in 2004 by Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, and UBS to end raiding lawsuits (signed Protocol text).
• The permitted list is exactly five fields; account numbers and statements are prohibited outright.
• Raiding is carved out, and separate team or partnership contracts stay fully in force — the safe harbor covers the individual move only.
• Membership is voluntary and changes weekly — thousands of member firms on the administrator's list; Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Citigroup withdrew in 2017–18 (coverage).
• Protection requires resigning in writing to local branch management and leaving a copy of the client list — the branch copy, unlike yours, includes account numbers.

If you are weighing a move, this document decides more about your first week at a new firm than the recruiting deal does. Here is how it actually works, clause by clause, including the part almost every summary skips: how to find out whether it applies to you at all.

Why does the Broker Protocol exist?

Before 2004, an advisor changing firms was a lawsuit waiting to be filed. The old firm would seek a temporary restraining order, the new firm would fund the defense, and the clients — the people both firms claimed to be protecting — sat frozen while a court decided whether their advisor was allowed to call them. The expense ran both directions, because every firm was the plaintiff one month and the defendant the next.

The Protocol was three of those firms calling a truce. Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, and UBS created it in 2004, and the document itself states its purpose plainly: to protect clients' privacy and their freedom to choose who advises them. It is short — a few pages, not a statute — and any firm can adopt it by filing a joinder with the administrator. That simplicity is why it spread from three signatories to the multi-thousand-firm roster it carries today.

That is the whole idea: a private truce with a five-item packing list. Now understand what it is not. It is not a law, not a FINRA rule, not an SEC regulation. It is a private, reciprocal agreement, and it binds only the firms that have signed it. That single fact drives everything else in this article.

What exactly can you take? The five fields

You may take exactly five pieces of client information, and only for clients you personally serviced:

1. Client name
2. Address
3. Phone number
4. Email address
5. Account title

That last one trips people up. Account title means how the account is registered — "John and Mary Smith, JTWROS," "The Smith Family Trust" — not the account number and not the balance. The five fields together let you do exactly one thing: contact a client, tell them you have moved, and let them decide. They do not let you pre-fill transfer paperwork, reconstruct a statement, or bring over a book in a spreadsheet. The list was designed to be enough for an announcement and nothing more.

The "personally serviced" limit is just as load-bearing, and it is where disputes still happen between member firms. If you inherited a client from a retiring colleague last quarter, or you covered a household twice while a teammate was out, whether you "serviced" them is exactly the kind of thing firms still argue about. What tends to decide those arguments is the record, not the memory: whose rep code sat on the accounts and for how long, documented meetings and correspondence, who the household was formally assigned to, and whether your servicing predates the week you started planning an exit. Build that inventory during preparation — a client you cannot evidence is a client your list should not carry. The Protocol narrows the fight; it does not abolish it.

What can you not take — and why do advisors still get sued?

Everything outside the five fields stays. The Protocol text prohibits taking any other documents or information: account numbers, statements, performance reports, financial plans, notes from your CRM, copies of anything on firm letterhead.

Advisors who get sued after a Protocol move almost always got sued for self-inflicted wounds, and the pattern repeats:

• Emailing a client list to a personal address "just as a backup." The forward itself is the violation, and firms audit outbound email after a resignation.
• Taking account numbers because the new firm's transfer paperwork would go faster. The Protocol addresses this directly: the account numbers go on the copy you leave with the branch, never on the list you take.
• Telling favorite clients before resigning. Pre-resignation solicitation sits outside the Protocol's protection entirely, and it is the first thing the old firm's counsel looks for.
• Assuming the Protocol applied when one of the two firms was not a member.

Three edge cases separate the deep pages from the summaries, and the first two live in the Protocol text itself:

• Separate contracts survive. The Protocol does not erase a partnership, shareholder, or team agreement with its own restrictions — the safe harbor covers the client-information move, not every promise you have signed.
• Raiding is carved out. When a firm loses what looks like a whole team or a meaningful piece of a branch at once, the document lets it seek relief even against a member firm. The five fields protect an advisor's move; they were never designed to protect an orchestrated lift-out.
• The announcement gray zone. The document predates social media, and whether a public "I've moved" post counts as solicitation is a question courts and arbitrators keep being asked. That call belongs to your counsel and your specific paper, not to a blog.

Follow the document exactly, between two member firms, and you have the strongest protection available against the classic raiding injunction. Not immunity — nothing grants that, and "personally serviced" disputes still get litigated — but a published standard that courts have seen for two decades, which is precisely the predictability the founders were buying.

What is the exact process on resignation day?

The mechanics are spelled out in the Protocol text, and the order matters:

1. Resign in writing, delivered to local branch management. Not an email to HR, not a call to your manager's cell. Written, local, delivered.
2. Hand over a copy of the client information you are taking. This is the two-list detail that do-it-yourselfers miss. The list you walk out with holds the five fields. The copy you leave with the branch holds the five fields plus the account numbers. Get those two lists backwards and you have handed your old firm its lawsuit.
3. Then, and only then, contact clients. After the resignation is delivered, you may reach out with your five fields and tell clients where you are. Each one who follows you does so by opening an account at your new firm, one signature at a time.

Nothing in that sequence is decorative. The protection attaches to a move done in order; a move done out of order is just a move, with all the old exposure.

How do you check whether a firm is on the Protocol?

Your firm's membership is a lookup, not a memory. The Protocol's administrator, J.S. Held, publishes the member list — the October 2025 edition ran to more than two thousand brokerages and RIA firms — and the list is a living document, so the check is a sequence, not a fact you learn once:

1. Pull the current member list from the administrator's site (jsheld.com).
2. Confirm your firm is on it.
3. Confirm the firm you are joining is on it — one out of two gives you nothing.
4. Date the confirmation.
5. Re-pull the list the morning you resign. The document's own mechanics allow a firm to withdraw with its exit effective on short notice, so protection verified during planning can be gone by resignation week.

Both firms must be members on the day you move; that is the entire test, and it has to be true twice.

Searches like "is Fidelity part of the Broker Protocol" or "is Wells Fargo on the Protocol" all have the same honest answer: whatever the administrator's list says the week you check. A static article cannot tell you a firm's current status, and any article that claims to is already stale. What the record does show, per the member list and industry coverage at the time, is that departures happen at the top: Morgan Stanley's withdrawal took effect in late 2017, UBS followed weeks later, and Citigroup — a founding firm — exited in early 2018.

Those exits are why the check matters so much. The firms most people assume are covered include some that wrote the rules and then left.

What if your firm is not on the Protocol?

Then none of the above applies to your move, and the planning changes shape. A non-Protocol move is governed by your employment agreement, any non-solicitation or confidentiality clauses in it, and the law of your state. In practice that tends to mean tighter limits on what you may take (often nothing), a real possibility of a restraining order in the first weeks, and a transition plan built around legal exposure rather than around a published standard.

Plenty of advisors make non-Protocol moves successfully. But they plan them differently: the client outreach is scripted with counsel, the timing accounts for how fast the old firm typically responds, and nothing leaves the building. If your firm withdrew from the Protocol — as several of the largest did — this is your lane, and pretending otherwise is the most expensive mistake available.

Does the Protocol decide whether you can move?

No. It was never a permission slip. The Protocol governs one narrow thing: what client information may travel between two member firms. Sitting on top of it are your employment agreement, your deferred-compensation terms, any promissory notes from recruiting bonuses, and your state's approach to restrictive covenants — including whether non-competes are enforceable for financial advisors at all.

That stack of paper is why the sensible sequence starts long before resignation day: pull your agreements, check both firms' Protocol status, and get a securities attorney into the plan before you act rather than after the first letter arrives. Most employee advisors have never needed a lawyer of their own — the firm's compliance department always handled the legal side — which is exactly why this step gets skipped, and exactly why it should not be. Nothing in this article is legal advice; the answer in your case depends on documents this article has not read.

For the wider picture of how the Protocol fits the employee-firm model itself, our breakdown of what a wirehouse is and what the label means when you want to leave covers the other half of this decision. And when you are mapping the full sequence, how long a financial advisor transition takes and how to resign as a financial advisor pick up where this piece stops.

Where to start

If a move is on your horizon, the free 2-Minute Transition Readiness Assessment at Advisor Growth Lab shows you where you stand, including how Protocol membership fits your specific situation. It takes two minutes and there is no pitch attached.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Broker Protocol a law?

No. It is a voluntary, private agreement among member firms — not a statute, not a FINRA or SEC rule. It binds only signatory firms, and your own employment agreement still applies on top of it.

What firms are in the Broker Protocol?

The administrator's list — thousands of brokerages and RIA firms, updated weekly — is the only reliable answer for any specific firm. Notable departures are part of the record: Morgan Stanley and UBS withdrew in late 2017, Citigroup in early 2018.

Is Morgan Stanley part of the Broker Protocol?

Per industry coverage at the time and the administrator's records, Morgan Stanley withdrew in late 2017 and has been off the Protocol since. Confirm against the current list before planning anything; membership can change.

Can I take account numbers or client statements?

No. The permitted list is five fields — name, address, phone number, email address, account title. Account numbers appear only on the copy you leave with your branch; statements and other documents are prohibited outright.

Does the Protocol protect a whole team leaving at once?

Not the way it protects an individual move. The Protocol text carves out raiding: a firm that loses what looks like an orchestrated team lift-out can still pursue relief even against another member firm. Team departures get planned with counsel from day one for exactly this reason.

Does the Protocol cover every client I have worked with?

No. The five fields apply only to clients you personally serviced, and that phrase is narrower than most advisors assume — inherited and shared households are where member firms still fight.

Educational purposes only, not individualized advice.