I read about soft dollars (CFAI even has a standard for that) but got a little confused as I don’t have any practical experience on brokerage. We all know the concept from L1: portfolio manager executes trades using a broker, paying higher than usual fees. The broker, in turn, gives e.g. research for ‘free’ to the portfolio manager. In this article, however, soft dollars seem to have many other forms than just free research: http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/softdolr.htm For example, an adviser using soft dollars to pay legal expenses, hotel and rental car costs …personal travel, entertainment, limousine, interior design and construction expenses. My question is: is it common that brokers either (a) foot your bills on anything you want as long as you generate brokerage or (b) give you rebates in cash? In CFAI materials it looks like (a) is possible since CFAI recommends that soft dollars can be used e.g. to pay Bloomberg terminal but not electricity in the office. As I said, I don’t have any experience on brokerage but nevertheless, it sounds pretty wild if a reputable broker pays all sorts of bills on behalf of the investment manager. How common is this?