Brokerage Clerks and Statement Clerks

• Nature of the Work

  Brokerage clerks and statement clerks work behind the scenes to produce records associated with financial transactions.

  Brokerage clerks, who work in the operations areas of securities firms, perform many duties to facilitate the sale and purchase of stocks, bonds, commodities, and other kinds of investments. These clerks produce the necessary records of all transactions that occur in their area of the business.

  Job titles depend upon the type of work performed. Purchase-and-sale clerks match orders to buy with orders to sell. They balance and verify stock trades by comparing the records of the selling firm to those of the buying firm. Dividend clerks ensure timely payments of stock or cash dividends to clients of a particular brokerage firm. Transfer clerks execute customer requests for changes to security registration and examine stock certificates for adherence to banking regulations. Receive-and-deliver clerks facilitate the receipt and delivery of securities among firms and institutions. Margin clerks post accounts and monitor activity in customers' accounts. Their job is to ensure that customers make their payments and stay within legal boundaries concerning stock purchases.

  A significant and growing number of brokerage clerks use custom designed software programs to process transactions, allowing transactions to be processed quicker than if they were done manually. Currnetly, only a few customized accounts are handled manually.

  Statement clerks assemble, verify, and send individual and commercial bank statements every month.

  In most banks, statement clerks, sometimes called statement operators, run sophisticated, high-speed machines. These machines fold the computer-printed statement, collate it if it is more than one page, insert the statement and cancelled checks into an envelope, seal it, and weigh it for postage. Statement clerks load the machine with the statements, cancelled checks, and envelopes. They then monitor the equipment and correct minor problems. For serious problems, they call repair personnel.

  In banks that do not have such machines, statement clerks perform all operations manually. They may also be responsible for verifying signatures and checking for missing information on checks, placing cancelled checks into trays, and retrieving them to send with the statements.

  In a growing number of banks, only the statement is printed and sent to the account holder. The cancelled checks are not returned; this is known as check truncation.

  Statement clerks are employed primarily by large banks. In smaller banks, their function is usually handled by a teller or a bookkeeping clerk who performs other duties during the rest of the month. Some small banks send their statement information to larger banks for processing, printing, and mailing.

• Employment

  Brokerage clerks held about 73,000 jobs in 1994, and statement clerks held about 25,000 jobs. Brokerage clerks worked in firms involved in the sales of securities and commodities. Almost all statement clerks were employed by banking institutions.

• Job Outlook

  No change is expected in the employment of brokerage clerks through the year 2005. Employment of statement clerks is projected to decline. Nevertheless, some jobs will become available each year to replace brokerage and statement clerks who transfer to other occupations or leave the labor force.

  Similar to other record clerks, employment will be adversely affected by automation and changes in business practices. For example, computers now calculate the dividends due on stocks, something done for decades by brokerage clerks with adding machines and calculators. However, brokerage clerks are still needed to enter data into the computer and to process information. In the past, the record of security ownership was a piece of paper-a stock certificate. Today, most securities are stored in computer form and traded using electronic data interchange. Although less paper changes hands, clerks continue to enter and verify all transactions. Automated statement processing will grow as the increased volume of transactions justifies the cost of the necessary equipment, and this will dampen demand for statement clerks. In addition, the further spread of check truncation is expected to hold down employment of statement clerks. The use of ATM card systems and other electronic money transfers should increase as well, resulting in significantly fewer checks being written and processed.

  (See introductory part of this section for information on working conditions, training requirements, and earnings, as well as sources of additional information.)

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