Not sure if this is a right place to ask, but anyone has experience of becoming an independent financial advisor affiliated with major banks such as morgan stanley and wells fargo? I contacted them but looks like they hire financial advisor as a full time employee rather than hiring them as an independent fa. Thanks a lot!
I work for Bank of America, so as far as I know, our bank requires our FSA (financial solution advisor) to get on-site training in Bank of America. With the acquisition of Merrill Lynch back in 2008, I think BofA only hires full time employee now since they are under the same umbrella and it saves time and money.
Commercial banking such as BofA and Chase have their owning investment banking branch. Merrill Lynch => Bank of America, Morgan Stanley => JP Morgan Chase. Typically, with those banks, they tend to hire their investment advisors within the company and provide with professional incensing if needed.
Not sure if this helps, but let me know if you need more help.
No such thing exist in US now. If you want be independent, typically there will be a clearing firm you can assoicate with. However, most large bank will only offer full time employee as financial advisors.
thank you so much for the insight!
thank you for the insight!
A bank is a poor choice to start as a financial advisor. The banks will pay you the least and give you the least room to grow.
Try to work for either a life insurer such as one of the big mutuals… Or for a wealth management firm such as Ameriprise, Merrill, Eddie Jones, etc.
Or visit an independent firm and see if you can get hired on.
Stay away from the big retail firms like Fidelity, Schwab and TD Ameritrade, unless you just want to be on the phone all day dialing numbers and selling wrap products that you don’t actually manage.
This is all good advice. Just want to reiterate that no one else in this thread is using the correct terminology and it could throw people off.
OP - You’ll never get hired at Morgan, Merrill, Wells, or UBS if you call them a “bank.” They’re wirehouse broker-dealers and take that seriously. Then you have the independent broker-dealers like LPL, Ameriprise, Raymond James, Edward Jones, Northwestern Mutual, Cetera, Commonwealth, Baird, and so on. Some will make you an employee and others offer you the ability to be truly independent. It varies by firm (and even within a firm. For example, Raymond James is split into two broker-dealers - Raymond James & Associates and Raymond James Financial Services. The former is employee based and the latter is for independent FAs).
Then there’s the RIA route which is as independent as it gets and where most of the assets are moving to these days.
In this context, “banks” would refer to Chase, BMO, Fifth-Third, SunTrust, etc. Being a rep for them sucks and should be avoided.
And, yes, stay away from working at a call center for one of the big three custodians (Schwab, Fidelity, and TD) unless you have no other options.
Someone, somewhere, a Schwab employee read your statement and is triggered that you don’t consider them a wirehouse BD.
https://advisorhub.com/schwab-echoing-wirehouses-pursues-broker-jumped-competition/
Why you paying attention to advisorhub? That’s for financial advisors…