Wealth Management

Hey thehopelesshopeful currently an intern at a wealth management shop and I can give you some info on what the job entails and the types of things I do + what the financial advisors/wealth managers do on a day-to-day basis.

1. Sales process: This is the nuts/bolts of this business. It's the process of taking prospective target clients and reaching out to them via linkedin or cold calling (this is rarely done in bigger shops) and seeing what their financial needs are. Ideally, your targets are people that are in their upper 40's - early 60's that have a lot saved and have zero investments, or are invested with another firm. Once a FA determines that their prospect has needs they can fulfill, the FA will set up a zoom or in person meeting (rarely in person unless the client is UHNW) and pitch to them. People in WM hate the word pitch but at the end of the day, you're pitching to this prospective client. Once you pitch to this prospect and they think you can do something for them that they, A. Can't do for themselves, and/or B. Can't find anywhere else, they turn into a client. POW! The FA now has assets to manage. 

2. Investment process: Once clients have committed to give you their retirement savings, you need to invest them. Most WM shops based in firms have proprietary investment plans tailored to the clients risk tolerance (ref: the efficient frontier) the FA places the client in one of usually 5 boxes and lets the CIO team at the firm do the investing. It's important to note that financial advisors almost never do any investing. It's becoming much rarer for a shop to run their own portfolios, though the ones that run their own money usually perform much better than the proprietary investments.

3. Hours: Do not be fooled by people who claim that WM has a better work life balance than other areas of finance. Although the required baseline hours are less than IB or literally anything else (other than like quant trading) the hours needed to succeed in this role are equal to or greater than those industries. Most FA's on my team are up at 4am and work until 11pm Monday through Sunday. This tails off after you have a good book of at least $500MM built up, but the first ten years of the career are like this. Ultimately you're running your own business and at the end of the day you will get out exactly what you put into the operation. 

4. Future: From what I've heard from the FA's in my office, who (keep in mind) deal with very HNW individuals, there is a definite future in this business long term. However, robo-advisors are becoming extremely common and will likely take over the bottom 50% of the market for persons with <$100,000 in assets to manage. It's a good way to earn a lot of money and have a fulfilling career where you watch the lives of people around you progress. 

Honest downsides:

-It's a PURE sales role. Again, most FA's do zero investing of their clients money. You will make your career on being charismatic and having a sharp tongue. If you are introverted in any way, this is not a great role for you. Cold calling is rarer now than in the past, but the FA's still make between 150-300 calls per week to seek out new clients. 

-Your coworkers are your toughest competition. You're all talking to the same people, in the same city, for the same reason. If you can't balance the feeling of being friends with these people and also striving to be better than them at everything you do professionally, get out. This is universally true for (most) finance roles, but it's very clear in WM. 

-Get used to the word no followed by various four letter words. It's sales, if you can't handle that then this is not the business for you.

-Young FA's have a tough time in this business. This is the biggest downside with WM, no matter how qualified you actually are, convincing a 60 year old that they should hand over all $5MM they've scraped up through their life to you (a 23 year old fresh out of college and CFP training) is tougher than going to the moon. The average age when folks in WM begin to build their book is 29, so keep that in mind.

Overall a great career with lots of $$$ upside (most of the folks in my office make $1MM-$10MM a year) but there are honest truths that should be highlighted about the business. Hope this helps you in your career journey, best of luck to you!