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.
You are intrigued by the prospect of going off on your own as an RIA, Hybrid, or Independent.
As a young producer back in 1999, I successfully moved 90% of my clients from Prudential Securities to Smith Barney without violating any rules or regulations. Now, fast forward to 2004 when protocol came into play.
