Louis Diamond Quoted
By Bruce Kelly
At one time, major brokerage houses ran large, expensive training programs for thousands of young brokers, and now it looks as if they are about to return to that model.
Brokers loved it because the bonuses put hundreds of thousands of extra dollars in their pockets. But the Big Four wirehouses — Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS Wealth Management Americas and Wells Fargo Advisors — have never really been comfortable with the practice. It was costly, and the brokers didn’t always produce the revenue the wirehouses counted on. And although the bonuses were structured to keep brokers in place for periods of seven years or more, after that many brokers simply moved on to a competitor to collect their next signing bonus.
“The big firms are all going to have to figure out new ways to bring in new talent,” said Louis Diamond, vice president and senior consultant at Diamond Consultants, an industry recruiter. “More advisers are retiring every day and the industry is getting grayer.”
