Displaying items by tag: work from home

(New York)

Something very interesting is happening in recruiting. While advisor movement slowed down right at the beginning of the pandemic, it has bounced back strongly in the last couple month. The reason why is that advisors are finding it easier to explore opportunities with new firms while they are working from home. Any advisor recruiter will tell you that calling a wirehouse broker at their branch is an almost impossible task as the office itself works as a gatekeeper. Even if you can get the advisor on the phone, it is taboo for them to speak about moving firms while they are in the office. Thus, the ability to take zoom calls from their comfort of their kitchen has opened the door to more recruiting since advisors are free to explore firms in-depth and with total privacy. Further, the lack of a need for offices has made advisors wonder if they need the infrastructure (and lower payouts) that come with being at a wirehouse.

FINSUM: The landscape for recruiting has changed overnight. No conferences, but no office gatekeepers either! It seems a great time for advisors to consider a move, and firms would be smart to put effort into recruiting right now as this is truly an unprecedented opportunity.

(New York)

Cloud computing is a red hot area of tech. Amazon’s AWS division gets most of the attention, but the whole sector has grown greatly in total revenue over the last couple of years. Heavy growth is forecast to continue through the early 2020s, but there is an x-factor that may give a big boost to cloud stocks which the market is not pricing. That x-factor is the fact that work-from-home is sending the demand for cloud services much higher than baseline forecasts. With distributed workforces, the need for cloud-based computing is higher than if workers were in offices. For example, Audi’s cloud spend grew 12% in just a month between March and April.

FINSUM: So WFH is a great tailwind for cloud computing. The only challenge is that the costs for companies have been soaring so much that they are trying to renegotiate them back down. Overall, seems a big net positive.