September 24, 2021
Louis Diamond Quoted
By Jeff Berman
The number of brokers and advisors at the four wirehouses — Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo — has been declining for several years and is expected to continue dropping for the foreseeable future.
Louis Diamond, president of Diamond Consultants
Wirehouses keep losing reps for multiple reasons: “The new popularity of independents. [There’s] more support and resources and a proof of concept for wirehouse advisors that independence is a viable alternative.”
Also: “Companies like Raymond James and Stifel and RBC … more of these superregional firms really grew in popularity and, post-crisis, wirehouse advisors cared much less about the brand and instead wanted to work for companies that just treated the advisors better and that didn’t have negative reputations in the crisis.”