People and Pay 2011: How Your Staff Affects Your Succession

FA Insight’s 2011 advisor study focuses on human capital and what it means to advisory firms. As firms grow, so does their need for people to run it—and so do the firm’s expenses.

Consequently, firms need to be strategic about how and who they hire. Building a strong practice is not just about attracting and retaining talented people, but about putting them on a path to leadership to meet the firm’s inevitable succession needs.

The 2011 study looks at human capital both from the perspective of a young firm trying to build a capable team and an older firm facing important decisions about its future.

Endangered Supply: The 2011 People and Pay Study, September 2011

For advisory firms, people represent the critical ingredient for growth as well as building value and effective succession planning. Achieving these objectives, however, will require firms to shore up weaknesses with regard to how they deploy and develop staff. Reflective of growing labor scarcity, compensation levels are on the rise again, retention is at risk and the source of the next generation of firm leaders is unclear.

With “The 2011 FA Insight Study of Advisory Firms: People and Pay,” FA Insight endeavors to support advisory firms in confronting these challenges. People and Pay, our recently released third annual industry study, is our second study with a special focus on human capital. A primary intention of the 2011 People and Pay study is to assist firms to not only attract and retain the right individuals, but to map a path that progresses people toward ownership and management responsibility.

Read more from the September 2011 issue of Investment Advisor. View the People and Pay archive here.

Sounding the Alarm: The 2011 People and Pay Study, January 2012

Lately an advisor can rarely open a trade publication without coming across at least one article focusing on succession planning. Most of these columns center on how dire the problem is with the hope being that couching lack of preparedness in such alarming terms will inspire advisors to action. Outside of recommendations to begin succession planning sooner, specific solutions are often in short supply.

Frankly, based on our research history we are guilty of perpetuating the succession fixation as well, citing in our recently released “2011 FA Insight Study of Advisory Firms: People and Pay” that lack of preparedness for succession presents “the greatest vulnerability for all firms.” The latest FA Insight study goes further, however, in striving to identify why succession is such a serious challenge and recommending key areas of focus for advisors to improve their preparedness.

Read more from the January 2012 issue of Investment Advisor. View the People and Pay archive here.