Are you one of the many advisory firms that is convinced that finding advisors to tuck into your firm is a key component of your future growth plans? Do you believe there are many, perhaps hundreds of financial advisors that would love to join your firm, but you just don’t know how to find them? We have had success tucking in advisors to our firm over the past few years.
Here are proven methods that we have used to find financial advisors that have been good fits for our firm:
It’s sounds obvious, because it is. These people are professionals and do this every day. There are several recruiting firms that work specifically in the financial advisor space. Some focus on wire house advisors turning independent, and other focus on independent broker-dealer affiliated advisors looking to join an RIA. Others work across all sub-segments. The goal is to work with 2 to 3 effective recruiting firms. Many leading industry blogs and publications will feature recruiters as guest authors etc. Recruiters aren’t hard to find.
Your custodial partner has a vested interest in helping you grow your business. More specifically, they gain immediately when you recruit an advisor from a competing wire house or independent broker-dealer and that advisor moves their assets to the custodian. Each of the major custodians has a sales function or sales force that is actively engaged in sourcing and recruiting advisors. You can be a soft landing for the advisors they find that are looking to join, versus start their own firm. You make their job easier.
Mutual fund or investment management wholesalers can be a terrific source of leads or at a minimum, information. The wholesaler spends a lot of time with RIAs, wire house advisors and independent broker-dealer advisors. Many times they develop relationships where the advisor will share they are dissatisfied and looking to make a change. If you educate your best wholesaler relationships about the type of advisors you are seeking, they can be your eyes and ears in the market. In the perfect case, they will make the introduction.
While all three of these methods have proven to work in our experience, each of these methods has some complexity to it. Recruiters will want to be paid for their efforts. The best ones are careful only to engage with firms that have the capacity to execute. They appreciate size and scale, but also understand the importance of a well organized execution plan and track record of success. Custodians are very sensitive to both scale and organization. Custodians do a very good job of client segmenting and understanding who their larger revenue producing clients are. They are also approached frequently by advisors looking to recruit and are therefore selective about where to focus and a well organized plan/approach is critical for them. Wholesalers are sales people. They want to help. The sensitivity here is they must not be perceived as poaching advisors from their other clients.
So there is some complexity, and nothing is ever easy, but the above mentioned methods have been proven to work to identify advisors to recruit to your firm.
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