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When Dutch retail investors evaluate a broker, the first check is always authorization: searching the AFM register for licensed investment firms authorized to offer investment services in the Netherlands. However, authorization status alone tells only part of the story. The AFM exercises ongoing conduct of business supervision over investment firms, and part of that supervision involves ensuring brokers meet strict execution quality standards.
MiFID II's best execution requirements evaluate price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement against the background of the client and the circumstances of an order. What makes this relevant for retail investor evaluation is transparency: brokers must publish this data publicly.
Investment firms must publish annual reports relating to their top five execution venues and execution-only brokers for trading volumes, giving greater clarity and transparency on the quality of execution obtained across different financial instruments. These reports must summarize, for each class of financial instruments, the top five execution venues by trading volumes and information on the quality of execution obtained in the preceding year.
The data published by trading venues includes price, costs, speed and likelihood of execution for individual financial instruments. This means that when a broker executes your order, the infrastructure they route through—and their choice of execution venue—is subject to public reporting standards.
These reports are not written for retail customers; they're compliance documents. However, they reveal structural choices: which execution venues a broker uses, how consistently they route orders, and whether patterns emerge across different market conditions. The most important execution factors for equities are likelihood of execution, price, cost and speed—the very metrics disclosed in these reports.
Finding a broker's best execution report typically requires visiting their official website and looking for regulatory documentation or "Investor Information" sections. Once located, these reports show the venues and brokers used most frequently and can indicate whether execution quality is stable across market conditions or varies significantly.
A thorough investor evaluation combines two layers: first, verifying the broker holds an AFM license or is a credit institution licensed by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) to offer investment services; second, reviewing the broker's published execution quality reports to understand how they actually deliver on that authorization.
This two-step approach—regulatory status plus transparency about execution practices—uses only publicly available information and reflects how the brokerage industry is actually regulated in the Netherlands. Neither step requires recommendations or personal financial advice; both are factual assessments of publicly verifiable information.
AFM – Register investment firms
ESMA – Best Execution Under MiFID II
AFM – Explanation of Investment Firms Register
Analysis, not investment advice.
