Mindy Diamond Quoted
By Elizabeth Dilts
NEW YORK, (Reuters) – After years of jumping from one firm to another, U.S. securities brokers are changing jobs less frequently and the largest brokerage firms say they are seeing their lowest attrition rates in years as financial markets strengthen.
Attrition rates are sharply lower at the nation’s four largest firms, known as wirehouses: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp’s Merrill Lynch unit, Wells Fargo Advisors and UBS AG’s U.S. Wealth Management Americas, according to head counts recorded in the firms’ earnings reports and an analysis by Reuters.
The wirehouses lost almost 1,500 financial advisers total in 2012 and again in 2013, according to Aite Group, a research firm. Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch each lost approximately 5 percent of their net adviser force in 2012, the group reported.
