Displaying items by tag: wirehouse

Going independent has many upsides and downsides, but listing them as pros and cons is not particularly simple. Sure, there are higher payouts than at a wirehouse, but there is also more responsibility. In some sense, it depends on the stage of your career as an advisor as to whether going independent is the right choice. If you are senior, with your own book of high paying clients and your own office/branch, then going independent can make sense. You get higher payouts and you already have experience managing a team, and you have more product flexibility for clients. If you are younger, going independent can be more difficult since you likely need more help building your book, and don’t have experience managing people or the overheads associated with running your own branch.

FINSUM: There does seem to be a “right time” to go independent. There are a lot of perks to doing so, but one does need to have a bit of an entrepreneurial slant as you truly are a business owner in such a scenario.

(New York)

Independent or wirehouse? It is a big decision, especially because it not only means moving firms, but going from being an employee to running one’s own business. Well, to fill the void between those two possibilities, LPL has just launched a new program designed to let advisors half-breakaway. The program lets advisors be independent, but also employees. The new new offering is short on details but follows in the footsteps of Raymond James and Wells Fargo, both of whom have similar opportunities.

FINSUM: This seems like a good option if you are an advisor that wants more flexibility, but does not want the difficulty associated with running your own firm.

(New York)

Wirehouse business may have gotten a boost from the demise of the fiduciary rule, but its decline has been uninterrupted for years. New data from 2018 is in and shows that wirehouses shed 5.7% of their client assets during the year. Advisor headcount also dropped by 403 advisors, brining the total to 54,030. According to the study, put out by Aite Group, “Wirehouses have steadily ceded market share from 2008 to 2018 … The segment has lost a total of 10 percentage points over that time period. As wirehouses continue to rationalize the size of clients they serve in advisory relationships, they also continue to see an outflow of advisors into other industry channels”.

FINSUM: RIAs and IBDs have been taking market share from wirehouses for years and the reasons why are obvious—better selling points for clients and better compensation. We think it is also a product of the demographics of the industry—as advisors get more senior and established the economics of going independent become more alluring.

(New York)

UBS has just launched its own robo advisor, which means that every wirehouse now has their own robo service. UBS’ new service caters to client with under $250,000 in their portfolio. The robo provides “risk assessment, online enrollment, regular monitoring for rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting functionality, and ongoing professional portfolio management aligned with UBS GWM CIO capital markets assumptions”. UBS joins Merrill Lynch’s robo launch a year ago, as well as Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley’s platforms.

FINSUM: After all the fear and anxiety, robo advisors seem to have found a comfortable niche alongside human advice.