Ameriprise Financial is making the arena of advisor recruiting a little harder for outsiders to watch.
The Minneapolis-based financial services company irked securities analysts and other advisor recruiting data users Thursday by leaving the usual advisor headcount and retention figures out of its earnings release for the first quarter.
Tom Gallagher, an analyst with Evercore ISI, asked whether Ameriprise's advisor count is falling.
"Any time I see someone removing a disclosure, I think there's going to be some suspicion that there's something in the numbers that caused the company to remove it," Gallagher said.
Jim Cracchiolo, the Ameriprise CEO, said the company has had no problems with advisor counts.
"Retention is quite good," Cracchiolo said. "Headcount is actually up."
But wirehouses and other competitors have already removed advisor counts from their earnings, and including detailed advisor data led to questions about minutiae, Cracchiolo said.
"We were constantly trying to explain where people were retiring and other things like that," Cracchiolo said. "We figured it would be easier just to do what the competitors are doing right now and not disclose that."
Ameriprise did say that it has "a nationwide network of more than 10,000 financial advisors" and added 82 experienced advisors in the first quarter.
When the company released its earnings for the first quarter of 2024, it said it had more than 10,000 financial advisors and had added 64 experienced advisors during the quarter.
What it means: Advisors who were full of excitement over the thought of seeing new, detailed Ameriprise advisor recruiting and retention data may need to find another hobby.
The earnings: Ameriprise reported $583 million in net income for the first quarter on $4.4 billion in revenue, compared with $990 million in net income on $4.1 billion in revenue in revenue for the first quarter of 2024.
Adjusted operating earnings, which exclude the effect of changes in the estimated value of the company's investments and insurance benefits promises, increased to $950 million, from $878 million.
Assets: Total assets under management and advisement fell 4%, to $657 million.
Total client assets at the Advice & Wealth Management unit increased 7%, to $1 trillion, and total client net asset flows increased 21%, to $10 billion.
Life and annuities: Ameriprise was the first big issuer of life insurance and annuities to post its first-quarter results.
The Retirement & Protection Solutions unit reported $1.2 billion in sales, down from $1.3 billion in sales in the year-earlier quarter.
But sales of traditional variable annuities without living benefits guarantees increased 28%, and sales of traditional variable universal life insurance rose 22%, the company said.
Cracchiolo told the analysts that the life and annuity business generates a substantial amount of free cash flow in all market conditions.
"We maintain excellent liquidity," Cracchiolo said. "With our cash flow, we're able to invest and return to shareholders at attractive levels. We have a strong excess capital position that also gives us the flexibility to be opportunistic. And our disciplined and proven risk management is highly effective even during periods of increased volatility.
Volatility: Ameriprise has plenty of cash and other liquid resources that it can use to navigate through periods of tariff-related volatility, Cracchiolo said, and the company's strong advisor and client technology systems, overall financial strength, and stable life and annuity products are helping it attract clients and advisors.
"Important at any time, but particularly during volatility, our proprietary client advisory systems have performed extremely well with increased traffic," he said.
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