Wirehouses by the numbers: How they stack up

January 17, 2024 8:00 AM

One way to tell where some of the financial services industry stand in the wealth management game is to look at some basic numbers.

Advisor headcounts, assets under management and revenue from their wealth firms stand now and where they hope to be heading. Here are some pertinent figures, taken from third quarter earnings results, for the biggest firms in the field.

Morgan Stanley

Advisor headcount: Morgan Stanley, considered the leader in wealth management, hasn't reported this since April 2021. It then was around 16,000 and is likely to still hover around that number.

Assets under management: $6.2 trillion in total, with $3.75 trillion under management by advisors, $1 trillion in clients' self-directed accounts and $1.39 trillion in its investment management division.

Financials: Morgan Stanley's wealth management unit generated net income of $1.3 billion on $6.4 billion in net revenue in the third quarter. Both figures were up 5% year on year.

Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch

Advisor headcount: 19,130, distributed among its brokerage business, mass-affluent advisors at Merrill Edge and wealth managers at Bank of America Private Bank.

Assets under management: $3.55 trillion in Merrill and the private bank.

Financials: Merrill's Global Wealth and Investment Management uni had profits of $1 billion on $5.3 billion in revenue.

Wells Fargo

Advisor headcount: Like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo has ceased reporting its advisor headcount. The last time the number was aired, it stood at roughly 12,000.

Assets under management: $1.95 trillion in total client assets in its wealth segment, including $825 billion in advisory assets.

Financials: $529 million in net income in its Wealth and Investment Management unit on revenue of $3.7 billion.

UBS

Advisor headcount: 6,142 in the firm's Americas unit, the majority of whom are in the U.S. Globally, UBS has 10,278.

Assets under management: The firm's Global Wealth Management unit has $2.9 trillion in invested assets. Globally, the firm is managing roughly $5.5 trillion in all its businesses.

Financials: The Global Wealth Management had $1 billion in profits on about $5.8 billion in net revenue.

JPMorgan

Advisor headcount: 8,867 advisors in its Wealth Management and Global Private Bank units

Assets under management: JPMorgan's Wealth and Asset Management unit has $3.2 trillion and its private bank $888 billion.

Financials: JPMorgan's JPMorgan's Asset and Wealth Management unit, which includes the private bank, had slightly more than $5 billion in net income.

Wirehouses by the numbers: How they stack up

Morgan Stanley

Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch

Wells Fargo

UBS

JPMorgan

Goldman Sachs

RBC Wealth Management