Oct 29
Trendspotter: Wirehouse Rep Decline Shows No Signs of Stopping by Jeff Berman - ThinkAdvisor
What You Need to Know
- Wirehouse headcount keeps falling, while reasons for the decline keep growing.
- It's easier than ever to start an independent RIA, according to industry experts.
- The cachet of big-name wirehouse firms is not what it used to be, especially among younger investors.
The Trend
The number of brokers and advisors at the four wirehouses — Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo — has been declining for several years and is expected to continue dropping for the foreseeable future.
While that decline doesn’t appear to be happening significantly faster now than it has been since the trend started in about 2010, after the end of the Great Recession, reps are fleeing wirehouses to start independent RIAs or join RIAs or smaller broker-dealers for an ever-growing multitude of reasons.
Morgan Stanley has stopped reporting advisor headcount, a spokesperson for the company said Thursday.
But headcounts at the other three wirehouses all declined last year.
