Edward Jones

Edward Jones is named after Edward D. Jones , who founded the company in 1922 in downtown St. Louis as a single-room office furnished with a desk, three chairs, and a hatrack. The firm has since grown to provide financial investment advice to over 7 million individuals and small business owners throughout the US and Canada.

Edward Jones encourages small local branch offices consisting of just one administrator and one financial advisor, allowing the latter to develop intimate knowledge of his or her community and clients. As Penny Pennington (Principal—Client Strategies Group) told us, this helps an advisor to “get to know (investors) and their family, what their tolerance for risk is, what they’re trying to achieve with their money, and help them set up a plan to do that. Then we keep those investors on track through their lives to make sure they actually achieve those goals.” This strategy has led to Edward Jones having over 12,000 branch offices, the largest number of all brokerage firms in the US.

While Edward Jones believes the majority of learning takes place by working on the job and receiving feedback from management, it also places great value on formal training. According to Pennington, “We consider training an investment, not a cost.”

A number of respected business magazines and organizations, including Fortune and J.D. Power, have  designated Edward Jones as one of the very best companies to work for in the US.