Full Service Brokers

Full Service Brokers have been there in the Indian stock broking landscape for over 30 years now. Full-service brokers do more than just letting their clients buy and sell stocks across indices. Their involvement includes the end to end services, including overall financial planning, research & analysis along with stock trading or investing.

The biggest USP (Unique Selling Point) of full service brokers is that they provide the client’s complete hand-holding when it comes to market research, Intra-day tips, company reports, trends and more.

This is something discount brokers do not since they follow the no-frills attached business model.

Let’s dig a bit deeper and understand what these stockbrokers bring to the table and what they do not!

Full Service Brokers Positives

Here is a quick look at some of the benefits of using the services of full service brokers for your stock market investments:

• Full-Service stockbrokers have PAN India presence since a lot of their clients tend to need assistance in offline ways. Thus, if you are looking to have face to face discussions and regular communications with local sub-brokers, Full Service brokers got it all covered in that aspect.
• As mentioned above, Full service brokers provide their clients with Market reports, company results, trading tips, trend analysis on a timely basis as per the client’s portfolio and requirements. Thus, if you are someone, who needs some hand-holding when it comes to the understanding of the latest trends and suitable advice – then full service brokers are perfect for you.
• At the same time, since Full service brokers have their own highly qualified research teams, they can help you better during turbulent times with sound judgement in handling your investments.
• Most of the times Full service brokers assign a relationship manager or an account executive for each client, providing individual attention to each portfolio with a check on its growth. Clients can get regular advice from their account executive around what works best for them not it just the short term but also long-term financial goals.
• Full service brokers offer an array of financial segments for their clients to trade or invest, unlike discount brokers who generally don’t have access to all trading instruments such as Commodity, IPOs, Mutual funds etc.
• The customer service provided by these kinds of brokers generally comes with a quicker turnaround, personalized communications with multiple channels to get in touch with them. Some of the full service brokers have actually built separate portals just for customer support.

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Full Service Brokers – Negatives

At the same time, let’s have a quick look at some of the concerns related to this class of stockbrokers:

• Brokerage: With all different services Full Service brokers provide, the brokerage charges are relatively higher as compared to discount brokers. These charges are generally a specific percentage of the value of the trade transaction and it varies depending on the trading segment.
• Although there are few exceptions, most of the full service brokers are dependent on the trading platforms provided by NSE or Omensys. Thus, relatively less innovation in trading platforms has been seen with full service brokers.
• Since a bigger chunk of their regular operations are offline in nature and are handled by franchises or sub-brokers, there has been less focus on developing sound ways of online customer service which works aptly for tech-savvy clients.
• It has been heard that as full-service brokers employ a full-time sales calling team, at times, they might advise you to buy or sell stocks to fulfil their monthly targets. This practice is called Churning and overdoing it will directly impact the client’s financial growth and overall goals.

All said and done, make sure you understand the specific expectations you have from your broker. If you have been able to narrow down that list, then it becomes much easier to choose the type of broker you like to go ahead with. At the same time, it will also help to decide which exact broker works the best for you within that particular broker type.

Experts advise that in case you cannot handle your financial decisions on your own and need some advice on market trends. And to add to that, if you are not tech-savvy or prefer some a humane tough when it comes to trading, go ahead with full service brokers.

If you want only low brokerage with good trading applications as your preferences, well, discount brokers might be suitable for you.

Here, we have compiled a list of all top Full Service brokers in India with the aspects that make them a good choice for you. There has been no order followed in the list and the ones listed at the top do not necessarily imply to be the best ones.

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Top 25 Full Service Brokers In India

Sharekhan is the 4th biggest stockbroker in India with around 3% market share and around 12,00,000 clients. Founded in the year 2000, this full service broker today has a network of more than 2300 sub-brokers and franchises across 575 cities of the country.

It has some unique offerings in its brokerage plans both in prepaid and postpaid terms. Check details on Sharekhan Brokerage.

The broker is known for its trading applications including Trade Tiger and this broker is suitable for intermediate to advanced level traders.

Active Clients: 5,05,410

Complaints Percentage: 0.0067%

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IIFL or India Infoline is majorly known for its huge offline coverage with around 4000 locations across 900 cities of India along with presence outside India as well. Started in the year 1995, India Infoline offers different brokerage plans based on the client’s risk appetite and trading budget.

This gives a lot of flexibility to the clients to choose and pay brokerage as per their own trading behaviour.

The IIFL Markets Mobile app is arguably the best mobile trading app in India.

IIFL is also known for the quality of fundamental research it offers to its clients and all these attributes account it to be one of the top full service brokers in India.

Active Clients: 2,03,983

Complaints Percentage: 0.015%

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ICICI Direct is a top stockbroking house in the country, enjoying a good amount of trust factor gained by its parent banking services company. One of the top USPs of ICICI Direct is the 3-in-1 account which provides huge convenience to clients when it comes to funds transfers.

Although there are way too many reasons that make ICICI Direct one of the top stockbrokers, its brokerage charges are relatively much higher as compared to other stock brokers in India.

However, the broker provides a well designed and high-performance trading application – ICICI Trade Racer which is suitable for expert-level traders.

Active Clients: 8,80,718

Complaints Percentage: 0.0036%

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Angel Broking is an oldie in the Indian stock broking scene with its inception way back in 1987. Today, it has a client base of 10,00,000 across 900 cities of the country and is certainly one of the top full-service brokers in India.

Its majorly known for its recently launched Robo advisory services, Angel Broking ARQ which is an investment engine for clients providing them with personalized recommendations and stock tips. At the same time, it boasts of some of the top tech trading platforms such as Angel Eye and Angel Broking mobile app.

Angel Broking is known to provide high-quality research at both technical and fundamental levels and thus, is one of the top full service brokers in the country today.

Recently, this full-service broker has pivoted towards flat brokerage charges plans. Check this detailed Angel iTrade review for your reference.

Active Clients: 4,27,366

Complaints Percentage: 0.014%

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HDFC Securities also provides a 3-in-1 account to its clients due to its presence in banking services. It boasts of highly flexible and seamless trading platforms across devices including a trading terminal Blink.

Although, the concerning part in this is that HDFC securities charge its clients for using HDFC Blink software for their trading needs. Nonetheless, HDFC Securities has a rare provision of NRI accounts which a lot of stockbrokers don’t provide to its clients.

Leveraging on its brand name, HDFC Securities has been among the top 3 stockbrokers in India for quite a while now.

Active Clients: 6,51,072

Complaints Percentage: 0.026%

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Motilal Oswal started in 1987, is one of the oldest stock broking houses in the country. Motilal Oswal Head Office is in Mumbai. Although their major focus has been institutional broking in the initial years, however, of late, they have been gradually focusing on retail broking as well.

In terms of brokerage charges, Motilal is pretty reasonable within full service brokers cohort.

Also to mention, Motilal Oswal came up with one of the unique trading platforms – a Trading Smart Watch App.

The broker is known to provide quality customer support to its clients with quick call support as well as through Online mechanisms such as MO Genie.

Active Clients: 3,26,448

Complaints Percentage: 0.018%

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Geojit BNP Paribas is a leading full-service stockbroking company in India. It was the first broker that launched online trading in the year 2001 and started mobile trading in 2010. Today, it has a presence in more than 500 cities in India and services more than 8,00,000 clients.

It acquired Sharekhan in July 2015 for ₹2200 Crore and gained huge jump in stockbroking market share in India.

The broker has done a reasonable job in providing exposure across the segments to its clients.

Active Clients: 1,61,216

Complaints Percentage: 0.0043%

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SMC Global Online is a leading full-service stockbroker based out of New Delhi, India. Established in the year 1994, the full-service broker enjoys presence with more than 50 branches across the country and 2400 sub-broker network.

Apart from retail stockbroking, SMC Global also provides Wealth Management, DP and Research services. SMC Global also has an international presence across Dubai.

Although SMC has a lot to improve in the mobile trading application it offers to its clients, however, the other platforms have been well-designed.

Active Clients: 1,06,469

Complaints Percentage: 0.015%

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Aditya Birla Money, incorporated in 1994, is a full-service broker based out of Chennai. For around 15 years from 1994, the broker was known as Apollo Sindhoori Capital Investments until 2009 when Aditya Birla Group bought 76% of it.

From then on, it has been part of the group and is known as Aditya Birla Money instead. Aditya Birla Money has memberships with NSE, BSE, MSEI, MCX and NCDEX.

The broker has done well in the past but its growth has seen a period of stagnation in the recent past.

Active Clients: 43,798

Complaint Percentage: 0.025%

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Kotak Securities is a prominent name in stockbroking space and it definitely leverages its banking services brand equity. Kotak securities offer an array of trading platforms along with lighter versions for internet bandwidth issues. It clocks more than 5 lakh traders every day and has a presence in more than 360 cities of the country with around 1200 branches.

Having said that, Kotak securities charge relatively higher brokerage charges across segments.

The broker offers Kotak Stock Trader, a mobile trading application that comes with smooth user experience and a large number of features to access.

Active Clients: 4,46,724

Complaint Percentage: 0.0071%

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Reliance securities is a trading arm of Reliance Capital and was founded in the year 2005. Based out of Mumbai, Reliance securities (or RSec) claims to have a client base of more than 8 Lakh across 1700 cities of the country. Although not as exhaustively as Zerodha varsity, but Reliance securities has tried to come up with a knowledge repository for beginner traders on its website.

It contains detailed information on stock trading jargons and explanation on how market dynamics work.

The technology aspect of this stockbroker can certainly see some improvement though.

Active Clients: 1,20,264

Complaint Percentage: 0.018%

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AxisDirect is the stockbroking arm of Axis Bank and was established in the year 2005 as a full-service broker. With around 73 branches across India, AxisDirect is one of the evolving stockbrokers in the offline space. Furthermore, AxisDirect also enjoys one of the highest active clients in the stockbroking space in India.

Being a subsidiary of Axis Bank, AxisDirect allows its clients to open a 3 in 1 Demat account which takes away all the hassles of fund transfers.

Like any other bank-based stockbroker, AxisDirect charges pretty high brokerage charges from its clients.

Active Clients: 3,89,825

Complaint Percentage: 0.00076%

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Edelweiss Broking services limited is part of Edelweiss Group, a leading financial services company that provides a range of products and services to its clients across Institutional, retail and corporations.

With an employee strength of around 6200, Edelweiss has a client base of around 9 lakhs serving across 237 locations in 120+ cities of India. In the recent past, Edelweiss acquired J.P. Morgan asset management company in March 2016 thus widening its coverage and hold in the commodities segment.

The broker was among the first ones to bring online account opening but has not seen much of technological improvements in other areas for a while now.

Active Clients: 1,22,914

Complaint Percentage: 0.0195%

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Karvy Online began its operations way back in the year 1985 with a major focus on institutional and corporate investments. However, with maturity in the market and consumer mindset, it has slowly moved into the retail broking space as well.

It is known to improvise and innovate a lot around customer service especially due to its online features such as Ask the Experts and Live Chat with Experts. This helps the clients a lot in making sound judgement around managing their portfolio.

Active Clients: 2,66,641

Complaint Percentage: 0.025%

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Ventura Securities is one of the most economical Full-Service broker in India charging as less as 0.03% for intra-day transactions. Another aspect in terms of cost is that Ventura securities provides a lifetime free trading account to its clients.

Having said that, they have a provision of a minimum brokerage charge on a yearly basis once you open an account with them (suggest to check with the customer support team for more on that).

Active Clients: 74,411

Complaint Percentage: 0.008%

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Religare Securities is a subsidiary of Religare Enterprises Limited. Today, Religare securities serves 8,00,000 clients with a presence in more than 500 locations in the country. Religare Securities also provides few unique services such as TIN & PAN facilitation at select branches and also works as NSDL-appointed enrolment agency for Aadhaar UID.

One amazing feature of Religare Securities is that clients get interest on the unused amount in their trading accounts if they use Religare for their trading needs.

Active Clients: 1,54,594

Complaint Percentage: 0.005%

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Nirmal Bang has a presence in more than 350 cities of the country with around 2000 franchises. It also offers a monthly trading based magazine ‘Beyond Markets for free for customer education.

It offers zero cost demat and trading account with the brokerage as low as 0.02% for intra-day and commodity at 0.01%. One good part about Nirmal Bang is that it provides call and trade facility free of cost unlike any of the stockbrokers in India.

Active Clients: 93,071

Complaint Percentage: 0.021%

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Anand Rathi is a full service broker based out of Mumbai with a presence in more than 1200 locations including Dubai. Set up in 1994, Anand rathi has something to offer for its Institutional, Retail as well as for high net worth individuals. As per the latest numbers of 2018-19, Anand Rathi employs a workforce of 2500 people and a client base of around 80,000.

It offers different trading platforms that help you access trade and trading history.

All that is required is the Anand Rathi login details (user id and password) to maintain and execute the trading decision.

Also, you can access Anand Rathi back office to plan your trading strategically.

This stockbroker is known to provide high-quality research across trading segments through its in-house research team.

Active Clients: 75,278

Complaint Percentage: 0.008%

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TradeBulls is a full service broker based out of Mumbai and charges a very nominal 0.2% for Equity delivery and 0.02% for intraday. The broker needs to work on the performance of its trading platforms to go along with better customer service.

Off-late the broker has been trying hard towards new customer acquisition especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

Active Clients: 67,756

Complaint Percentage: 0.042%

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Arihant Capital is a full service broker based out of Mumbai that was incorporated back in 1992. Arihant Capital has a presence in around 110 cities of the country with close to 700 branches.

With a client base of around 1.15 Lakhs in India, Arihant Capital has memberships running with BSE, NSE, NCDEX, MCX and MCX-SX. Arihant capital has also created a repository around trading education with tutorials for beginner clients.

Active Clients: 30,875

Complaint Percentage: 0.003%

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LKP Securities is a full-service broker based out of Mumbai and has a presence in more than 2300 locations across 200 cities of India.

Started as a securities brokerage house in 1948, LKP Securities is a listed public company that posted a net worth of ₹158 Crore for the FY 2016-17. LKP Securities has memberships with NSE, BSE, MCX-SX, NCDX and DGCX (Dubai) and allows its clients to trade across multiple segments.

Active Clients: 27,593

Complaint Percentage: 0.018% 

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Bonanza Online is one of the prominent full-service broking houses in India with a presence in 560 cities in India in around 1800 outlets (franchises and sub-broker partners). Bonanza online provides a 3-in-1 account to its clients in partnership with a few national banks.

It has a membership with different segment indices such as NSE, BSE, MCX, MCX – SX, ICEX, USE along with the affiliation from NDSL and CDSL.

Active Clients: 34,686

Complaint Percentage: 0.008%

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BMA Wealth creators is a full-service broker based out of Kolkata with its corporate office in Mumbai. This broker is more than 15 years old and has coverage through 42 branches and 7000 business partners or franchises across India.

BMA Wealth has a membership with NSE, BSE, NCDEX and MCX and has a client base of over 1,000,000 across the country.

The broker gets one of the highest number and percentage of complaints registered from its clients for multiple kinds of reasons.

Active Clients: 22,101

Complaint Percentage: 0.09% 

Let us know your comments or feedback on this article in the comments section below. Happy Trading! Feel free to read this review in Hindi as well.

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