February 18, 2020
By Mindy Diamond
Financial advisors at the big brokerages have witnessed a great deal of change in the firms over the past decade. Shifts in ownership, compensation and management have many of these folks acknowledging that the business is vastly different than it was back in the day or even just a few years ago.
But perhaps the most alarming of all changes is the increasingly hypervigilant, compliance-driven environment that has become a part of the cultural fabric of these firms. It’s a shift to a new world order where a zero-tolerance policy prevails, leaving advisors at all levels vulnerable in ways they never were before.
Historically, the more revenue an advisor generated for his firm, the more insulated he was from possible termination; the worst he might have expected would have been a word of warning from management. But today the opposite is true—that is, the bigger and more high-profile the advisor, the more vulnerable he could be and the more likely his firm may look to make an example of him.
