The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
Vanguard Brokerage Services (VBS) is the retail brokerage division of The Vanguard Group, operated through Vanguard Marketing Corporation, a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and a member of FINRA and SIPC. Through a Vanguard Brokerage Account, individual investors trade Vanguard's own mutual funds and ETFs alongside third-party mutual funds, stocks, bonds and CDs, with no minimum required to open an account and Vanguard ETF shares purchasable from $1. Online trades of stocks and ETFs have carried no commission since Vanguard matched the rest of the industry on January 2, 2020. VBS is built primarily as the access point to Vanguard's own index fund and ETF lineup rather than as a full service trading platform aimed at active traders. Vanguard states its order routing follows "best execution" principles across multiple market centers and reports that the large majority of its ETF trades execute at the midpoint of the quoted spread. Where VBS differs structurally from brokers such as Fidelity, Schwab or E*TRADE is ownership: its ultimate parent, The Vanguard Group, is owned by the funds it manages, which are in turn owned by fund shareholders, so the firm answers to no external shareholder base. An annual account service fee of $25 applies unless a client elects electronic document delivery or holds at least $1 million in qualifying assets. The Vanguard Group was founded in 1975 by John C. Bogle after his departure from Wellington Management Company, and is headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania. It introduced the first index fund available to individual investors in 1976 and extended into low commission brokerage in 1983. As of December 31, 2025, Vanguard reported roughly $12 trillion in global assets under management, more than 50 million investors, and about 20,000 employees, with 465 funds worldwide as of February 2026. Salim Ramji became CEO in July 2024, the first Vanguard chief executive hired from outside the company. On February 2, 2026, Vanguard announced expense ratio cuts across 84 mutual fund and ETF share classes spanning 53 funds, an average reduction of about 27 percent that brought its asset weighted average expense ratio to 0.06 percent. Combined with earlier 2025 reductions, Vanguard said the two year total came to roughly $600 million in fee savings for investors, which it called the largest two year reduction in the firm's history.
