Advisor news
Financial advisor career news from Willis Consulting
Annual Compensation Rankings For Advisory Firms
Each year OnWallStreet magazine publishes their annual report on compensation rankings by advisory firms. A new trend this year points to growth in team based award programs. As financial recruiters, we’ve definitely seen more and more firms recruiting high end...
Competition For Top Financial Advisors Heating Up
Reuters reported last week that Merrill Lynch is upping their ante for recruitment of top brokers whose performance put them in the top 40 percent of their peers. An upfront cash payment of 150 percent of the fees and commissions they earned during the prior 12 months...
Growing Your Business – Getting To The Next Level
I always find Managing Partner of Peak Advisor Alliance Steve Sanduski’s articles worth the read. If nothing else, he gets you thinking about your own business and how you can take it to the next level. The article below is no different; however I must say I never...
Will Technology Replace Financial Advisors?
I came across an interesting article in this month’s Financial Advisor, “Shakeout Ahead” written by Andrew Gluck, a veteran financial writer and owner of Advisor Products, Inc. a marketing technology company servicing 1,800 advisory firms. The gist of the article was...
Wells Fargo Does What a Bank is Supposed To Do
Wells Fargo, CEO John Stumpf, puts it bluntly: “When we hire somebody around here, we want to know how much you care, before we care how much you know. We call our employees team members, not employees. Employees denote an expense to be managed. Team members are an...
Financial Advisor Recruitment To Expand In 2012
There has been talk (and verification) of expansion in both wirehouses and regionals all month long. Just this week BofA Merrill announced it planned to continue to hire and build its core global wealth management business. (They hired an additional 1,697 new...
Financial Recruiters React To Raymond James-Morgan Keegan Deal
OnWallStreet spoke to their elite Recruiter Roundtable members to get their reaction to the Raymond James-Morgan Keegan acquisition this week. Most of them agreed it looked like a good “cultural” fit, but when it came to the retention packages being offered the...
Rapidly Growing High Tower Opens Scottsdale Office
“High Tower plans to continue to ramp up the expansion and take advantage of the increased advisor movement,” stated Executive Vice President of Business Development, Mike Papedis, to reporter Lorie Konish of OnWallStreet on January 23. [pullquote]The firm’s model has...
New Fee Disclosure Rules Anger Broker-Dealers
The Department of Labor’s 401(k) plan fee disclosure rules that would require U.S. broker-dealers to report how much they are paid to distribute mutual funds through brokerage windows is going to create a nightmare. Brokers claim that the hundreds of different...
Morgan Stanley to Limit Cash Bonuses
FinancialAdvisor online magazine reported January 17, that Morgan Stanley, owner of the world’s biggest brokerage, is capping cash bonuses at $125,000 as the firm curtails pay and defers more compensation for senior executives. Members of the company’s operating...
Merrill Focuses On Adding Quality Advisors
Bank of America has seen six consecutive quarters of growth in its workforce of financial advisors which now number about 15,500. As a counter to the rumor that more Merrill brokers will be leaving due to competing firms offering them large incentives and the former...
What’s the WHY Behind Your Goals?
I love this story; I can relate to it, and what financial recruiter, advisor, or anyone in sales wouldn’t? [pullquote]…as a financial advisor, it’s very important that you understand the “why” behind each of your goals[/pullquote] We all focus on setting and obtaining...
Will it be Stifel or Raymond James and for How Much?
Industry analysts continue to debate over who will acquire Regions Financial’s brokerage firm, Morgan Keegan, but nobody is commenting or confirming anything. The haggle is obviously over price, but it looks doubtful it will be the $1 billion that Regions is looking...
Advisors On The Move: WHAT’S Ahead For 2012?
Our President and CEO, Bill Willis, member of OnWallStreet’s elite Recruiter Roundtable, has this to say regarding 2011 brokers on the move and what’s in store for 2012: It was a good year for us and better than the previous year—and ending strong. That foreshadows a...
Financial Recruiter Looks Back: Re-Evaluating and Self-Discovery
Here’s a great article that was written in October, 2011, for OnWallStreet, by Rick Rummage, CEO and founder of The Rummage Group. (Yes, a competitor in the recruiting industry.) I never shared it on our blog site, but I think it appropriate now as many advisors gear...
Is There Always Tomorrow?
How often do you find yourself saying “I can do this tomorrow”? If you are like most people, you say it more often than you’d like, and it’s frequently about tasks you are not too keen about doing. But what about those times you say it about something that you would...
BofA to Add 160 Financial Advisors in Arizona and So. California
The new Merrill Edge Financial Advisors are targeted for Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County and are to be on board by the end of the first quarter, 2012, bringing the total financial solutions advisor force in these areas to more than 250. You may...
Financial Advisors Spared From Layoffs at Morgan Stanley
A sigh of relief came from the 17,291 global-wide financial advisors at Morgan Stanley last Friday when a spokeswoman from MS told OnWallStreet that advisors would not be included in the cuts planned for the first three months of 2012. (A Bloomberg story had broken...
Morgan Keegan Advisors on the Edge of Uncertainty
Will Regions Financial Corp find a buyer for Morgan Keegan? That’s been a question in the industry for months, but recent speculation points to a very slim chance of it happening. What makes it more interesting is that it now appears that it may be Regions Financial...
Financial Recruiters Should Have “It” Too
Glad I have your attention…so what is “it”? "It" is the all-purpose positioning statement, known in the trade as an elevator speech, because it should be short enough to convey who you are and what you offer in the space of an elevator ride. It helps you present...