In their 1982 hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” English punk rock band The Clash asks a compelling question of financial advisors. (OK, so maybe they weren’t specifically speaking to wealth managers …) Regardless, it is a question on the minds of most, if not all, advisors in this world of heightened optionality and competition for top talent.
Though not quite as catchy as the iconic song, the next lyric in what might be an anthem for financial advisors would posit a slightly different question: “Do I stay because I am well served, or do I stay because I feel stuck?”
So what does “well served” look like? It depends on what you, as an advisor, value most. For some, it’s a meaningful referral and lead-generation source from the firm. For others, it’s about being left alone to freely serve clients as you see put. And for others still, it’s about overall value provided relative to the “firm keep.” The latter is one of the most powerful definitions as it succinctly captures the ethos of the issue: If the firm is keeping more than half of your paycheck, it had better be providing value commensurate with that override.
Yet we often speak with advisors who feel tied to their firm for reasons other than feeling well served. To be sure, it requires a certain level of introspection to determine if you stay because your firm adds genuine value, out of loyalty, or some other factor—or even some combination thereof.
Yet it’s these “other factors” that many advisors get caught up in because they’re often less “concrete” than qualifying the value a firm provides, leaving advisors with plenty of room to get stuck in “indecision mode.”
And I do not mean to minimize or dismiss these very valid concerns, because one advisor’s minor issue is another advisor’s Mount Everest. These are deeply personal considerations, and the reality is that in almost all cases, staying put is the easiest and cleanest path to take.
The reality is this: Those who choose to stay with their current firm should do so first and foremost because they and their clients are well served, not because of other, non-value-driven factors.
So what is leaving advisors mired with indecision and uncertainty about whether they are truly in the right place to serve clients and grow their business? These are the six most common factors we hear—and another way to consider each.