Five Questions for a Top Recruiter

Research: What’s your view of the recruiting market in 2009 year?

The market’s slower; fewer brokers are moving. From the recent numbers that I’ve seen, this means 60 percent fewer brokers are moving than two years ago, when the number of brokers moving each month was about 3,000. Now it is 1,200.

There are less brokers moving for a variety of reasons. Some are afraid their clients may not move with them, because of all the market turmoil.

Now, these numbers are really hard to quantify. In the past year, about 6,000 wirehouse brokers left their existing firms and went to new firms, namely regional firms and others. This is a golden era for the regional firms.

About 8,000 brokers left all of the large national firms, and 4,800 went to regional or some independent firms. This means regional firms like RBC, Stifel Nicolaus, Oppenheimer, Raymond James, Janney Montgomery Scott, Morgan Keegan and others.

How are recruiting deals looking?

The talk about the large deals, 200 to 300 percent, is misleading, in my view. It’s a lot of
smoke and mirrors.

Yes, the big firms are offering from 100 to 130-140 percent upfront, with the rest in back-end bonuses.

But you have to jump through a lot of hoops and be really qualified to get this. And even with the major wirehouse firms offering this, they are still losing brokers, left and right.

What advice would you give advisors who are looking to move?

Money is important to everyone, especially in this environment. But it’s not the sole reason to go to a firm. You have to carefully compare firms and know where you want to be. You don’t want to change firms every few years.