2025 INDEPENDENT BROKER-DEALER REVIEW & RANKING
Amore agrees that direct indexing, alternative investments and structured products are key to engaging wealthier clients.“ It’ s certainly where all the demand for new stuff is happening and it tends to be with those advisors who are moving up-segment or whose clients are moving up-segment.”
He says Kestra recently rebuilt its alternative investment platform,“ making it easier for our advisors to do due diligence, research, market and ultimately transact on alternative investments like private equity, private credit, real estate, hedge funds— some of the illiquid types of strategies that are designed for savvier investors.” The platform was rebuilt using iCapital’ s technology.“ Alternative investments always require a lot more diligence and paperwork than a traditional liquid investment.”
According to ISS Market Intelligence, some 35,000 reps switched firms in 2024. It noted that LPL“ added nearly twice as many new reps as the next nine largest firms combined, driving its rep share from 16 % to 24 %.”
Amore says alternative asset management firms mostly catered to institutional investors before but have built up their retail solutions, which has changed the game, as has the technology advancements. Banks and wirehouses used to have more of a stranglehold over that distribution and the technology has democratized access to alts. That’ s especially important if the pool of public stocks shrinks, Amore says.
Elwyn says Raymond James recently created new roles at the firm to beef up its private market financing capabilities and build up private investment alternatives. The firm has also enhanced its technology effort, reflecting the need for technology to play a big role in advisors’ futures, simply because there are going to be fewer advisors in the future.
That’ s one reason the firm is rolling out an AI initiative. The firm has appointed a chief artificial intelligence officer“ a newly created role to help us leverage technology in AI in a way that creates better home office efficiencies,” Elwyn says.
“ As we look ahead there’ s a probability that there may be as many as 100,000 fewer advisors in the next 10 years than are in the industry today because of changing demographics and retirement rates. So I’ m convinced in that regard the future advisor is going to have to not only deliver even more complex solutions to clients than they already have but in addition to that, the future advisor is going to be serving more clients than they ever have before. So it’ s more value add than they’ ve ever had before to more clients than ever before. That really underpins all the technology investments Raymond James continues to make.”
Recruitment Wars
According to ISS Market Intelligence, some 35,000 reps switched firms in 2024. It noted that LPL“ added nearly twice as many new reps as the next nine largest firms combined, driving its rep share from 16 % to 24 %.”
The reps in that study indicated that they moved because they’ d be getting larger payouts, better access to technology and they felt their work was more in sync with the clients’ interests.
But the recruiters say it’ s more complicated than that. There’ s actually a lot of inertia in this world, and when a rep leaves it’ s because they’ ve reached a tipping point with their current firm, often over service. That can be because private equity owners at the mothership have cut back on back-office help and advisors can’ t get people on the phone, some recruiters say.
“ There’ s been so much consolidation at broker-dealers,” says Diamond,“ that whenever a B-D is sold, that’ s a massive opportunity for other broker-dealers to recruit. Or even post-acquisition, the firms give five-year retention deals.
“ And as those deals tend to wear off, advisors who stayed because it was easy to begin to realize that the firm is different.”
46 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | APRIL 2025 WWW. FA-MAG. COM