Vanguard is one of the cooler-structured brokerages. Vanguard (the management firm) is owned by the mutual funds themselves, of which you are an investor of. So their shareholder obligation is genuinely towards "clients" of the individual mutual funds. As far as I'm aware, this is the only mutually-owned mutual fund firm.

It's definitely got a solid track record and good fees, but these are things I'd feel weird about advertising it on HN for.

I’ve been a customer for 15 years:

- they have bad customer service - they have a bad website that hides important information - they don’t have cheaper funds than others - they were latest to the party on commission free trading.

It’s just a well-marketed brand.

vanguards very large and they're a mutual fund, so they have a lower profit motive than most brokers for it. they're basically the standard retirement fund company now

> lower profit motive than most brokers for it

This doesn’t make sense.

What I think they're referring to is their sheer size (ratio of customers or $ invested to staff) has meant historically the annual % fees on mutual funds and other investments have been lower than at other institutions.

It's... less unique to Vanguard these days, as several of the large providers have equivalent low-cost funds you can invest in; but 15 years ago it was more significant, iirc.