We are pulling out of the protocol because we are going to put more resources back into supporting our advisors. This is the line, more or less, touted by firms like Morgan Stanley, UBS and Citigroup at the end of 2017 as they departed the Protocol for Broker Recruiting in favor of their own internal structures and incentives to retain advisors thinking of making a move.
The recent news of Oppenheimer offering an independent channel to bolster its traditional wealth management business, by tasking Derek Bruton, the former head of LPL Financials National Sales team, may not have come as a big surprise.
In the financial services industry, change is the only guarantee and evaluating your practice, for your sake and that of your clients, to truly address strengths and weakness is the only way to give yourself the ability to strategically plan for ongoing success.
Working as an independent advisor is the career path you want to take but your concerns about turning independence from a goal to a reality are mounting. Do you have enough revenue to support such a move?
Just as diversification is important to a portfolio, diversification in the types of advisors at a firm is equally important. While the industry is showing a decided shift to fee-based business or what is often considered “plain vanilla or packaged product offerings”, the fact is that commission business, investment banking, capital markets, and private placement business is not dead.
