The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association had enough to celebrate by holding its first in-person Private Client Conference since 2019 this week.
But Merrill Lynch Wealth Management President Andy Sieg told the audience of advisors at a Miami hotel that was just the beginning.
Sieg said that despite the challenges the stock market is facing right now — war in Ukraine, inflation and higher interest rates — it is, as he put it, “not the time to sell everything and buy crypto.”
He told advisors that the “bull market for advice is alive and well,” and that with the easing of pandemic restrictions, clients want what he called a return to culture, rather than simply a return to the office.
“What do clients expect by 2030 and beyond?” he asked. “They say, ‘Simplify our lives with a genuine one-stop shop.’ Basis points for alpha don’t help clients sleep at night, but are we on track to achieve their goals? They say, ‘Watch our back and know what makes us tick.’ Don’t assume you know who’s calling the shots and who made the money.”
Accomplishing this, he said, will depend on a few things. First, he cited the importance of teamwork, noting that 10 years ago only 45% of advisors at Merrill were on teams. Today that figure is 80%, and by 2030, he said, it should be 100%.
Next, a one-stop shop has to have the goods, he said, with offerings such as investment banking, lending, trust capabilities and a fully integrated technology platform with self-service options.
And finally, Sieg said, there must be diversity of people and perspectives.
“When a client says, ‘know me,’ we better. The high net worth market has changed,” he said. “Women are making financial decisions more than half the time, there has been enormous wealth creation in communities of color, and there are the unique needs of LGBTQ clients and blended families.”
He had some unsolicited advice for advisors. “If you want your demo to look anything like America in 2030, you need to change your hiring and development program — pretty much yesterday,” he said.
And all of this will happen fastest, said Sieg, “when we are back together in our offices. Not all the time, but most of the time.”
A panel of advisors addressed the subject of being back together, agreeing that two years of working from home had produced innovations that they will keep, that events outside the investment world had changed their relationships with clients, and that it took a little doing to get their staffs to resume some of their 2019 ways.
Christina Anderson, a wealth management advisor for Fidelity who works with high net worth clients in south Florida, said the second and third generations in the families she works with, people 20 to 40 years old, like working virtually.
“It has allowed us to engage with younger family members,” she said, “But I still feel that when we dive into emotional conversations with clients, we should be sitting across the table from each other.”
The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 has brought an honesty to client relationships, said Christopher Jay, a Merrill advisor in Seattle.
“After George Floyd,” said Jay, who is Black, “clients would say, ‘how are you doing?’ but I knew what they meant. I chose authenticity, and it really resonated. Sometimes the folks who really wanted to have honest conversations were not the ones I would have expected, and some surprised me the other way, but that’s fine. And I have continued this. It’s okay to talk about these things now.”
Jay said the deeper relationships, in turn, have helped business.
“A difficult moment for everyone turned into a tailwind for me,” he said. “I have continued not having a filter. My family says I never had a problem with that anyway.”
He said now when he goes to meet with clients, it’s no longer with an armful of papers. The nuts and bolts stuff has been done virtually, and he said clients actually seem to prefer watching him circle numbers on a Zoom screen rather than on paper.
“That means when we’re together, we’re really together. It’s lighter, more fun,” he said.
But back in the office, he said, he wants people to step away from that screen.
“I said no more chatting and Skyping,” he said, “no more while we’re here. If someone asks me a question on Skype, I open my door and say, ‘Here’s the answer.’”
There is such a thing as a free lunch, and Northwestern Mutual advisor Matthew Wunder of Westport, Connecticut, said it worked very well to get his staff back into the office.
“They were a little reluctant, even though they had gone to other types of events,” he said with a laugh. “So I offered free lunch three days a week and first, two people came in, but then they told the others and it snowballed, so I made it five days a week.”
