Regional broker/dealer Janney Montgomery Scott recruited 14 new financial advisors to its private client group in the first quarter of 2019, totaling $1.1 billion in new assets. That’s up from a year earlier when the Philadelphia-based firm added 11 advisors and $950 million in assets in first quarter 2018.
Nine of Janney’s new advisors came from Wells Fargo Advisors, which lost 4% of its advisor head count in 2018. The bank has been in a state of transition since 2016 when revelations first emerged that its employees were opening bank accounts without customers’ permission, under extreme sales pressure from the firm. Similar incentives were also under investigation in the firm’s wealth unit. Wells Fargo also recently lowered payouts for experienced advisors whose revenue numbers drop below $250,000 for the trailing 12 months.
All of Janney’s remaining first quarter hires came from Merrill Lynch. The regional firm has a history of attracting advisors from the wirehouse firms.
New first quarter hires will join Janney’s branch offices in Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The regional b/d, which is owned by Penn Mutual and runs a capital markets business alongside its private client group, says it manages over $80 billion in assets, having recruited more than 200 advisors since 2015.