Quick & Reilly (www.quick-reilly.com) is a unit of FleetBoston Financial Corp., which recently acquired Bank Boston Corp. and is about to complete the purchase of Summit Bancorp. This combination includes 925 financial advisers, and Quick & Reilly plans to make them available to its 400,000 online traders, as well as the 900,000 who trade the old-fashioned way.

"We were a low-cost provider of good execution and good services," says Quick & Reilly president Don Froude. "Now we want to offer the client some advice and judgment to go with that."

Quick & Reilly says it will offer free, unlimited access to financial advisers. They will stop short of giving advice on specific stocks, and while Internet trades range from $14.95 to $19.95, trades through a broker will run $70 on average.

This approach is unique, analysts say, because brokerage firms typically require customers to have significant assets in their portfolios before assigning them to advisers. But Quick & Reilly has no minimum requirement for opening an account.

Moreover, Quick & Reilly is offering a level of personal advice that can't be found with leading online brokerage firms such as E*Trade Group Inc. and Ameritrade Holding Corp. These firms offer automated advice while Quick & Reilly's customers get to speak to a live adviser.

However, the No. 10 online broker ranked by assets, Quick & Reilly isn't offering as much as full-service brokers, which give clients specific stock picks and access to proprietary research, among other things.

With Merrill Lynch Corp.'s fee-based, full-service option, customers receive complete access to a broker - including advice on specific stocks - and all the firm's resources for no more than 1% of assets under management. Clients must have $20,000 to open what Merrill calls a cash-management account, giving them full access to brokers.

Analysts say Quick & Reilly seems to be aiming for Charles Schwab Corp. But while Schwab's branch staff offers general information, it requires customers to have at least $100,000 in account assets before they are referred to an independent investment adviser.

Fidelity Investments customers can visit one of the firm's more than 75 branches and receive general advice from a financial adviser, says firm spokesman Jim Griffin. To open a Fidelity account, investors must have $2,500 for a taxable account and $500 for an individual-retirement account.

TD Waterhouse Group Inc. has more than 170 branches, but customers don't have access to financial planners there, says Melissa Fox, a spokeswoman for Waterhouse. The firm requires retail customers to have a minimum of $100,000 in assets before they are referred to an independent adviser in the Waterhouse network.

Forrester Research estimates that more than 21 million US households will trade online by the end of 2005, up from more than four million households in 2000. But access to online trading alone might not be enough for the next wave of investors. More than half of the next generation is expected to trade less frequently and seek more advice, says an analyst.

(The Wall Street Journal)