April 8, 2022
Jason Diamond Quoted
by Jeff Berman
Brokers at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management are increasingly shifting away from working on their own to becoming part of a team and just about all of them are expected to be part of a team eight years from now, according to Andy Sieg, president of the Merrill division.
The “future of wealth management” will be dependent upon “five foundational elements,” starting with “great advisors working as teams,” he said Thursday at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s Private Client Conference in Aventura, Florida.
The “teaming” trend is not new…
…Diamond Consultants has been “certainly aware that firms, including Merrill, have been encouraging teaming for years,” Jason Diamond, vice president of Diamond Consultants, told ThinkAdvisor. “But this is definitely the furthest we’ve seen any firm go.”
What was “a little unclear to me” from the AdvisorHub article that reported Sieg’s comments on Thursday was “whether the comments were a prediction or a mandate” that all Merrill brokers become part of a team by 2030. That was not made clear by Sieg during his presentation.
“I think it’s a big distinction,” Diamond said. There are benefits to teams for the firms, clients and advisors, he said, noting that it provides greater scale for advisors and gives clients access to diverse points of view.
Diamond predicted such a mandate could lead to more brokers opting to break away from Merrill or other large firms.
