February 27, 2020
Louis Diamond Quoted
By Mrinalini Krishna, Miriam Rozen
Wirehouses continue to lose advisors, and the teams that defect are only getting bigger and in control of more client assets.
Average advisor headcount at the wirehouses fell 2.3%, the latest financial reports of the four firms show. On the flip side, the average advisor headcount at non-wirehouse broker-dealers reviewed by FA-IQ grew by 2.8%.
And the profile of advisors looking to leave has also changed in terms of size, industry tenure and productivity, says Louis Diamond, executive vice president and senior consultant at Diamond Consultants.
Increasingly, Diamond says, defectors are “lifers” who have grown sick of what he describes as “bureaucracy.” Diamond says wirehouse execs should see the trend as the “handwriting on the wall.”
