Wealth Management
Thrivent is ramping up its recruiting efforts to hire nearly 600 new financial advisors in 2025, aiming to counteract the anticipated wave of advisor retirements expected across the industry.
While the broader advisor workforce has grown only 0.3% annually over the past decade, Thrivent’s hiring initiative would represent a 2% increase, far outpacing the trend. The firm is targeting early-career professionals for salaried virtual advisor roles in key cities like Denver, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Dallas. These roles are intended to serve as stepping stones to more advanced positions, either within Thrivent’s employee structure or through its independent RIA, the Thrivent Advisor Network.
With over a third of U.S. advisors projected to retire within the next ten years, Thrivent is focusing on building a younger, more diverse advisor base aligned with future client demographics.
Finsum: It’s worth noting this trend in recruiting and what incentives are offered to attract this talent.
As traditional 60/40 portfolios face challenges from high interest rates, large deficits, and geopolitical uncertainty, BlackRock suggests evolving asset allocations by incorporating alternatives like liquid alts, gold, and bitcoin. Their Target Allocation model portfolios follow a structured process—sourcing, screening, and sizing—to thoughtfully reconfigure bond-heavy portfolios for modern conditions.
This involves reducing standard bond exposure in favor of bond-like alternative strategies such as market neutral or merger arbitrage, while preserving resilience in recessionary scenarios.
Screening over 500 liquid alt funds, BlackRock emphasizes operational quality, performance consistency, and true diversification potential before inclusion. Ultimately, portfolio sizing is optimized to align with investor risk profiles, often making alternatives a significant component—up to half of the fixed income portion in balanced portfolios—while adjusting for more conservative or aggressive strategies.
Gold and bitcoin, though more volatile, should be considered for diversification, with gold typically replacing bonds and bitcoin funded from equities.
Monte Carlo simulations have become an essential tool for retirement planning, allowing users to model thousands of financial outcomes based on variables like investment returns, inflation, and life expectancy. Using AI assistant Claude, the author generated a detailed simulation for a hypothetical couple—Joe and Jane Average—without needing programming skills or statistical expertise.
Claude translated the couple’s retirement goals and financial data into a 5,000-iteration simulation using historical return data and a 60/40 stock-bond allocation, delivering a 95.78% success rate for retirement sustainability.
The simulation projected a median portfolio of $28.2 million by Jane’s life expectancy, with very low depletion risk even in advanced age. Key strengths of the plan included strong pre-retirement savings, realistic spending goals, a balanced asset mix, and delayed Social Security filing.
Finsum: Monte Carlo simulation can give you the edge to navigate and model various situations to deliver the best results to your clients.
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Although the Trump administration is rolling back some environmental regulations and cutting incentives for renewable energy development, many sustainability-focused investments remain commercially viable.
Deregulatory moves and proposed tariff increases may challenge clean energy supply chains and weaken enforcement of environmental protections. However, the economics of renewables like wind and solar continue to improve, with costs often rivaling those of fossil fuels in parts of the U.S. Demand for energy is also rising due to technologies like AI, reinforcing the need for diverse and resilient power sources.
UBS maintains that a diversified, global approach to ESG investing can continue delivering competitive returns even in a less supportive political environment.
Despite shifting U.S. policy, sectors such as infrastructure, energy efficiency, and materials still present strong opportunities for sustainable investors.
Structured notes, once reserved for hedge funds and ultra-wealthy investors, have surged in popularity among retail clients thanks to bite-sized offerings, generous yields, and downside protection amid volatile markets.
These bank-manufactured products, linked to indexes or stocks, use derivatives to offer tailored exposure—whether for income, growth, or buffered loss protection—with some notes capping upside while guarding against market drops. Products like Bank of Montreal’s Nasdaq 100-linked notes offer a fixed return if markets rise, and principal protection if they fall, while others—like buffered or contingent income notes—offer periodic income with defined loss limits.
As volatility climbs, advisors increasingly recommend these notes to generate income without taking full equity risk, with firms like iCapital reporting major spikes in interest following market shocks.
Finsum: It’s interesting that high level investors are using structured notes like buffer products in this high volatility environment.
The US defined contribution (DC) retirement industry, once buoyed by steady asset growth and strong equity markets, now faces a profitability squeeze due to fee compression, demographic shifts, and intensifying competition. As baby boomers retire and withdrawals surpass new contributions, the system is experiencing net outflows, pushing providers to rethink their business models.
Recordkeepers are seeing administrative fees decline significantly and are increasingly relying on ancillary revenue streams—like brokerage accounts and financial advice—to offset shrinking margins.
While total DC system revenues rose modestly between 2013 and 2023, the real surge came from retail wealth management, which generated $45 billion in new revenues, reflecting a shift toward participant-centric strategies. Providers are also contending with rising technology and support costs, prompting restructuring, digitization, and outsourcing, even as consolidation gives larger firms scale advantages.
Finsum: Retirement solutions providers are being forced to adapt quickly, with success increasingly tied to their ability to expand beyond recordkeeping.