March 17, 2023
Jason Diamond Quoted
By Victoria Zhuang
It’s the best of times and the worst of times for wealth management firms amid the fast-moving bank crisis.
Advisory and brokerage shops are playing defense, rushing to reassure and educate clients worried about financial contagion from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. At the same time, some are going on the offense to attract displaced advisors and others who may be reassessing their own employers.
It’s all shaping up to be something of an existential crisis for some wealth managers.
Near-term, industry recruiter Jason Diamond said that wirehouses are most likely to gain from any exodus of advisors at collapsed institutions.
“You have to recognize that the biggest and most established firms are probably the most immediate beneficiaries of this,” Diamond said, adding that the wirehouses “are among the firms best prepared to facilitate a fast move, to alleviate client concerns.”
“Your clients have just been through something fairly traumatic,” he added. “And if you’re going to ask your clients to come with you, I think you have to offer relative stability and a known entity.”
