By Mindy Diamond – The change in compensation that UBS recently announced reflects a tightening of the reins by the firm’s Swiss banking parent. This combined with a retrenchment in recruiting sends a strong message that the battle for control between advisor and firm is slowly but surely being lost by advisors.
While UBS leadership spins this comp change as a positive, generally speaking, advisors are not seeing it that way.
Mindy Diamond Quoted – By Jed Horowitz, AdvisorHub – Morgan Stanley broke with recent big-firm tradition on Tuesday, telling its more than 15,000 advisors that they will have to generate more revenue in 2020 to qualify for the same payout percentages that they are earning this year.
Louis Diamond Quoted – By Charles Paikert, Financial Planning – Anne Marie Stonich knew she had to make a change. After five years at Brighton Jones, a large Seattle RIA, Stonich and two colleagues at the firm wanted to run a business their own way.
By Mindy Diamond – WealthManagement.com – As wirehouses battle to retain control of their channel and maximize profit, expect more advisors to vote with their feet in search of freedom and flexibility. Corporate profit seems to driving the bus these days, and as it rolls along, it’s increasing the distance between advisors and the firms they call home. As a result, advisors are often left feeling as though they’re being forced to choose between maintaining their income level or best serving their clients’ interests.
By Mindy Diamond – During the past few months, wirehouse advisors may feel as though they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. That is, they are being forced to choose between maintaining their income level or best serving their clients’ interests. Corporate profit seems to be driving the bus, and each day it is increasing the distance between the advisors and the firm that they call home.
Louis Diamond Quoted – Financial Advisor IQ – The Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule has certainly put a damper on broker recruitment deals, but it’s unclear whether wirehouses can keep them down, according to WealthManagement.com. The DOL took no issue with the size of the incentive deals, however, but only with the back-end compensation, Louis Diamond, vice president of recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, tells the web publication. Rather, the wirehouses took the opportunity to lower the bonuses, he says.
Mindy Diamond Quoted – By Megan Leonhardt, WealthManagement.com – With the level of retention deals falling, firms are turning more to deferred compensation as a means to keep advisors in their seats. But is it a short-sighted solution?
By Mindy Diamond, WealthManagement.com – Every year, the wirehouses tweak their compensation grids. And from the end of last year through the beginning of this one, our telephones have been ringing off the proverbial hook with advisors that were extremely upset with their wirehouses’ announced compensation changes.
Barbara Herman Quoted – By Thomas Coyle, Financial Advisor IQ – In recent weeks, the four biggest retail brokerages all updated compensation plans for the 53,000 or so financial advisors who work for them. Most of the tweaks concerned bonuses, and though they differ in the details, experts say they are alike in one vital respect: They’re hard to follow.
Barbara Herman Quoted – By Susan Konig, WealthManagement.com – An informal survey of branch office managers across advisory channels finds one consistency in their wishes for a new year: Fair compensation.