Is it common to use multiple brokers for risk reduction?

External question — Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange Author: G__ Original post: https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/1088 License: CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. Would it be considered appropriate risk-management or overkill to utilize multiple brokers to manage a given trading strategy? A couple specifics: I'm interested in what a reasonably-sized hedge fund might typically do, not an individual day trader. Let's assume major equities and that either broker could easily handle the whole strategy alone; the point is avoiding the risk of one broker being unavailable or unable to execute a trade.