Today’s podcast is about transitioning in a tough economy. Is this the time to move? There never is a good time to move. When markets are booming. It’s really busy. Really tough to consider when markets are getting smacked and things are down and you’re holding a lot of clients hands. Another really tough time to move. After this recent sell-off, still picking up the pieces is this a good time to move? The answer is it’s never a good time to move.

 

It’s really tough to move in any market. But we have to also tell you that there never has been a better time to or an easier time should I say to move. Why? We’ve never seen assets transfer in this fast period of time. We’re seeing transitions, even in this market, even when markets were bad, and when markets were really good we’re seeing transitions of 100% of assets in as little as three months. We’ve seen 100% books transfer in two months. We’ve actually seen it in 30 days literally no longer is the hard wait and struggle to bring in assets over a period of six months or nine months or even a year or longer.

 

Why? The reason is multifold in our opinion. Certainly, the markets have been really good for 12 years businesses have been booming well clients have been really happy and very sticky. Until very recently. Also, COVID clients really got used to and only wanted to talk to their current clients their current you know, advisors that I say, so they didn’t want to talk to anybody new. So the clients were more sticky than ever before. They certainly didn’t want to meet anybody new. And that’s still the same, same thing. We’ve also seen a massive change since advisors last move, call it 7-10 years ago, 15 years ago why technology has really advanced.

 

So teams of people surround the advisor to help them move their accounts, but also because of DocuSign and how fast things transition. We’ve never seen it faster. And firms are paying record dollars for advisors books, and they’re also paying really big back-end bonuses and easy hurdles to hit. So the total dollars paid for books have never been higher and firms are even hungrier today because they are still seeing in a recent down market and today’s tough market transitions that are still transitioning at record speed.

 

So when is a good time to transition? Never is is today a good time likely yes. And will it get harder to transition in the future? Likely, markets may get tougher. Clients may not be as happy and sticky while COVID is over. So they might be entertaining more meetings with more people. Technology is probably still going to advance and will firms still be paying record dollars for your business today? There’s several variables in that in that equation that may not be here. In the future as it is today. Thank you for listening

 

Thank you for listening