The leading professional association for Black financial advisors has a new award that recognizes wealth management executives for leading the way on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Andy Sieg, the president of Merrill Wealth Management, accepted the inaugural "Spirit of the VISION" Award from the Association of African American Financial Advisors during the group's annual
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"To effect change, champions of diversity need to emerge from within the industry. You also need to understand the people and the culture of the people you are trying to reach," Davis said in a press release about the award.
To be eligible, an individual must be a C-suite wealth management firm executive who supports ethnic diversity in the industry, particularly for Black advisors, and must demonstrate ability to hire, promote and elevate "Black/African American" financial professionals, according to the association's
In remarks accepting the award, Sieg thanked the leadership of the association, known as Quad-A, for "pushing us forward to modernize and diversify our profession" and connect firms to valuable new clients. "The affluent B/AA community is a critical part of the future. It is growing faster than the general affluent population," he said, adding that serving this population is "both a moral imperative and a commercial imperative. The face of wealth is changing. Advisors need to engage a multicultural, diverse client base to succeed."
Sieg said he was focused on creating opportunities to advance Black talent at all levels of Merrill. He described "doors" through which the Wall Street bank and brokerage recruited for diversity: new trainee programs, apprenticing advisors for existing teams and hiring mid-career and experienced advisors, with room to grow for all roles.
In 2020, Merrill released
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Merrill said in an email that "Merrill has a long-standing commitment to increase the diversity of our financial advisors, and provide support to help each advisor succeed."
In the past decade, Merrill and
In his remarks at the event, Sieg acknowledged a need to create "more opportunities" for support to senior-level professionals. He currently offers the bank's Market Executive Leadership Academy and Resident Director Leadership Academy programs. Seig called them "best-in class" and said that they "exemplify our commitment to DEI." Sieg also highlighted the in-house advisor networks that Merrill provides, including coaches for Black advisors.
"Strong advisor-to-advisor network is core to our culture — sharing best practices from one advisor to another," he said.
Alleson Tate, a board member and the director of media relations at Quad-A, said in an interview that it made sense to create the award as more advisors than ever attended this year's conference. The wealth management industry, she added, had reached a critical mass of firms interested in partnering with the association.
"It just became more important that we really tried to honor those firms who have shown a true commitment to DEI efforts — prior to George Floyd's murder," she said. "Let's really just be candid."
Tate said Sieg had demonstrated that commitment since he began his current role at Merrill five years ago.
"When he took the helm of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Department in 2017, he came in with the business imperative to increase change [in] that advisor demographic." she said, adding that he backed it up with metrics for accountability, importantly, and "continues to show up year after year to support us," while also backing the CFP Board's
Tate said that some financial services leaders are "truly dedicated to change, and we're seeing the change. It's not lip service." But others are a different story. "We've all seen that… [but] the numbers don't lie," she said. Overall, she said there had been "a significant improvement" in DEI practices at many firms.
In the past, Tate said, wealth firms ignored courting Black and minority communities by claiming there was little wealth to manage. But today, "there's so much more wealth flushing through the system." The minority advisor, by connecting with them, can become sustainable, profitable and create generational wealth in turn. She added that connecting minority clients to advisors who look like them "allows communities to regain trust" after suffering historical discrimination that shut them out of wealth building. In turn, seeing successful Black advisors in their lives signals to young people the possibilities of the profession and "redefines the value of this career path, which I also think is just very overlooked."
Still, when it comes to guiding professionals into this career, "getting them in the door is half the battle," Tate said of hiring B/AA, LGBTQ+ and other diverse professionals, noting that she is a Black and lesbian professional herself. "It's the least you can do. Once you've hired them, now what? The part that is missing in firms is really looking at their culture and their history of inclusion, and valuing diversity of thought."
"What these firms really need to look at is, you don't want to hire black and brown people who think and speak and act like all the other white males at the firm."
