March 21, 2019 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Oisin Breen, RIABiz – Two months after taking the reins at HighTower Advisors, CEO Bob Oros’ notched his first big solo score with two key poaches. The firm announced today (Mar. 20) that Catherine “Cat” Davies is joining as chief of staff and head of business management, and Greg Fink will be head of advisor success.
March 21, 2019 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Charles Paikert, RIABiz – Private equity-backed buyers of advisory firms have dominated the RIA headlines for the past two years. Aggressive dealmakers KKR and Stone Point Capital, which bought Focus Financial in 2017, exemplify the trend.
March 19, 2019 – By Louis Diamond – An aging advisor population has highlighted the need to increase the ranks of next-generation (‘next-gen’) advisor talent. The problem is that financial advisor training programs – previously the dream of many college graduates and freshly-minted MBAs – have taken a back seat to Silicon Valley startups. Indeed, just a quarter of today’s advisor population is under the age of 40, and a mere 10% is under 35, according to research by the CFP Board and Cerulli.
March 11, 2019 – Louis Diamond Quoted – By Bruce Kelly, InvestmentNews – After bleeding advisers for more than two years, Wells Fargo Advisors is changing its succession plan by offering a bonus to advisers who stay on until retirement and giving financial help to young advisers acquiring the business of those advisers who are retiring.
March 7, 2019 – Barbara Herman Quoted – By Miriam Rozen, Financial Advisor IQ – To boost its recruiting and retention efforts, Wells Fargo Advisors has announced that, effective April 1, it will offer more generous options for FAs on both sides of its succession packages — those retiring and those getting the retirees’ books of business.Specifically, WFA will offer retiring advisors who commit to a warm hand-off of their book of business to remaining WFA FAs a loyalty award of 25% over their trailing 12 months production.
March 5, 2019 – By Mindy Diamond, WealthManagement.com – While wirehouse advisors may have every intention of acting as a fiduciary and making decisions with their clients’ best interests in mind, the very nature of working for a big brokerage firm often makes it impossible for them to do so.
February 25, 2019 – By Mindy Diamond, Advisor Perspectives – Wirehouse advisors seeking independence may not have to break away. They can operate as “captive independents” within their existing firms. But will this model be independent enough?
With Louis Diamond – Many financial advisors don’t have a succession plan for themselves. Louis joins host Chris Holman (Executive Coach with Horsesmouth) to discuss the roadblocks and how to get started on building your own strategy in this webinar which aired on February 21, 2019.
February 22, 2019 – Barbara Herman Quoted – By Miriam Rozen, Financial Advisor IQ – Last October, almost three weeks before Merrill Lynch Wealth Management’s Andy Sieg disclosed that his wirehouse’s 2019 compensation plan for advisors included a haircut, his management team pre-emptively attempted to downplay the reduction’s significance.
February 20, 2019 – Barbara Herman Quoted – By Miriam Rozen, Financial Advisor IQ – Wirehouse Wells Fargo recently unveiled the identities of the first two advisors to join its new RIA channel. Both were already advisors within the Wells Fargo organization. But questions remain as to whether this new channel will have broad appeal to broker-dealers looking to move to the RIA model.
