Displaying items by tag: wealth management

One of the biggest stories in the financial advisor recruiting world has been the exodus of advisors from Merrill Lynch to greener pastures. The big winners of these transitions have been LPL and Morgan Stanley. 

Last month, the Harris Rao Group, who is based in Phoenix moved to Morgan Stanley from Merrill Lynch. The team has a total of $630 million in client assets and generated $3.5 million in revenue last year. 

The group’s lead advisors are Christopher J. Harris and Nihaal M. Rao. Harris and Rao joined forces in 2005 and had been looking for a new home over the last couple of months. Both started their careers with Ameriprise Financial before joining Merrill Lynch in 2008. They were ranked #30 by Forbes in terms of wealth management teams.

According to sources, they wanted a place where there was less pressure to sell banking products and a more complete set of insurance products for their clients. Many of their clients are business owners, and they believe that Morgan Stanley offers better solutions for their needs.

Morgan Stanley also continues to aggressively recruit advisors and has been offering high-end deals to continue gathering assets. Over the last couple of months, they have landed just over $1.2 billion in client assets from Merrill Lynch. 

Finsum: Morgan Stanley continues to poach advisors from Merrill Lynch. The latest is a group from Arizona which produced $3.5 million in annual revenue.

The world is always changing. This applies to how people spend their time, do business, communicate, socialize, entertain themselves, etc. The same applies for financial advisors when they are trying to recruit clients. While the principles remain the same, the methods must be constantly adapted to new technology and generations.

For SmartAsset, Rebecca Lake shared some tactics that are working for financial advisors in 2023. While there is plenty of content on the tried and true paths such as referrals or getting involved in the community, Lake explores more unconventional routes.

An interesting angle is to cultivate relationships with estate lawyers. Often, someone gets an inheritance and is in immediate need of an advisor. A recommendation from the estate lawyer can land an advisor a high net-worth client with minimal effort. Similarly, a tax accountant can also be a great source of referrals especially as people are more motivated to get their financial life under control during tax season.

Another approach is counterintuitive and that is to seek out older advisors and ask them for referrals. Many older advisors are not really interested in adding new clients as they have enough on their plates. Thus, they may recommend that the prospect meet with a different advisor who can do a better job for them. 

Finsum: Financial advisors have to get creative to land new clients. Here are some unconventional approaches that are working in 2023.

Social media can be a goldmine for financial advisors with a plan and system to consistently create content. However, it can also be a curse for advisors who don’t represent their practices properly or spend time and resources ineffectually.

In theory, social media gives an advisor the ability to reach thousands of users on various platforms, many of whom may be in the market for a financial advisor. It can also help you target prospects in your niche and customize content accordingly. For SmartAsset, Rebecca Lake CEFP shares some additional tips on effective content creation for social media.

The first goal is to create brand awareness through a presence on social media. This is the first step in the journey from gaining a social media follower, converting them to a prospect, and eventually a client. The next step is to use interactions on social media to build a following and deepen connections with existing clients and prospects. One strategy to do so is to run polls and ask questions of your followers to gain a deeper understanding of their perspective on various matters and spark thought and conversation.

Another important step is to do some research in order to understand where your ideal client spends time on social media. For instance, an advisor targeting younger clients may have better results on Tiktok or Instagram whereas a client targeting older clients would have more success on Facebook. 

Finsum: Social media is increasingly how advisors connect and communicate with clients and prospects. Here are some tips to increase your odds of success. 

For Vettafi’s ETFTrends, James Comtois discusses some of the key advantages of direct indexing for investors, and why the category is expected to continue growing at a healthy clip over the next decade. In essence, it’s become increasingly evident over the past decade that investing passively and consistently in low-cost, diversified funds is the key to outperformance. Currently, there is $260 billion in assets managed via direct indexing with this figure expected to exceed $500 billion over the next decade. 

At the same time, society continues to evolve in a manner that serves consumers with content, products, and services that are customized to their taste. Concurrently, there has been technological innovation in the financial space that has resulted in drastic declines in the cost of stock trading and money management. 

Direct indexing is at the intersection of all these trends. It captures the best parts of passive index investing as it recreates an index in an investors’ account with some tweaks if necessary to reflect one’s personal values and beliefs or unique financial situation. It utilizes technological innovations to scan for tax loss harvesting opportunities which then can be used to lower an investors’ tax bill. Due to this factor, direct indexing strategies outperform especially in more volatile environments. 

Finsum: Direct indexing is one of the fastest growing areas in wealth management. Here are some factors behind its increasing popularity. 

Financial advisors have been leaving Merril Lynch at a steady clip over the past couple of years in search of greener pastures. Recently, David B. Ammerman and Sara E. Graham, who managed $353 million in client assets, left the firm to join Raymond James’ independent advisors division. He was ranked as the #37th best wealth advisor by Forbes this year and had been with Merrill Lynch since 1998.

Similarly, William Edward ‘Ed’ Winegar and Gregory W. Berg also left Merrill Lynch to join LPL’s employee brokerage unit two weeks ago. They are naming their new practice, Winegar Berg Wealth Management. The duo managed $205 million in client assets and generated $1.6 million in revenue last year. Both had been with Merrill Lynch since 2005.

This continues a trend of Merrill brokers leaving for Linsco which is LPL’s employee advisor channel. LPL continues to grow at an impressive rate, in part due to several affiliate options it offers for prospective advisors. Last month, it added about $800 million in client assets from Merril. Currently, LPL has 22,000 advisors, and it continues to take advisor and market share away from big banks and legacy providers of financial advice.  

Finsum: Merrill Lynch continues to see brokers leaving the firm. One of the firms seeing an influx of advisors is LPL which has a variety of offerings.