Raymond James Advisors Post Strong Sales, Income

Financial advisors number 5,337 in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, with the majority affiliated with Raymond James as independent advisors. A year ago, this figure was 5,323, but it rose to 5,345 in the January-March quarter of 2010.

The higher year-over-year advisor headcount and asset-under-management figures “look very, very positive,” said CFO Jeffrey Julien during the analysts’ call.

Thought the recruiting environment has cooled off from where it was 18 months ago, “It remains a good recruiting environment,” said COO Chet Helck, head of the PCG.

In terms of recruiting trends, the company is seeing more interest in the independent-contractor channel, Helck says, rather than in the employee channel, which had been very popular in the past year or so.

“This reflects activities going on at other firms and market conditions,” explained Helck. “And it gives us comfort, since we have multiple channels. As one softens, we can take advantage of momentum in another channel.”

Company executives do not expect much negative fallout from the financial-reform package, which Executive Chairman Tom James criticized for not addressing the real issues that caused the financial crisis of ’08-’09.

“We see little impact from the reform package as we don’t do much derivative trading or work in proprietary products,” Reilly said. “And when it comes to the fiduciary standard, we were founded on the client-first approach.”