PWM out of college?

What kind of roles can someone get in PWM as a fresh grad? I'm really interested in AM but I am not interested in financial advising and being a CFP

 
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1.Investment Management track either working on a team for a group at an RIA or BB.  2.Also Private Banking would be a great role. 

1. Lots of groups use/need paraplanners, client service reps (lot of client interaction), money managers / portfolio builders while they gather and retain assets (the retention comes from a combination of services provided by all of those roles and overall relationship).

2. Private Bank - two basic tracks - A. Investment Management, and B. Relationship Management. Good friend is an MD at a BB PB. He handles the relationships, networking, sourcing clients, etc. His team manages all the money and does all the service work. Both are great roles for the right person. Has multiple PMs on his team. Also has tax, charitable, trust, and lending planners on the team. Not sure if they are cross functional with other bank departments or dedicated to the PB.

Both paths will give you plenty of exposure to learning the biz and deciding where to specialize. 

 

Tagging on to rickle's comment to go into more specifics on RIA world...

Many RIAs (imo the ones you'd want to work for) have in-house research teams that have minimal client-facing responsibilities and instead are doing diligence on fund managers, building portfolios, market outlooks, and other things that help the client facing people manage the firm's portfolios and convey investment philosophy to clients.  This type of role sounds more like what you'd be into since you don't want to be an advisor and/or help with planning. At my prior firm the entry level roles here entailed doing some level of bitch work that the senior research people didn't want to do (taking notes on manager calls, writing up investment update memos for the firm and clients, etc.) but ultimately you grow into a role where you get to help spearhead manager selection on the public/private side and, to the extent your firm does this, help build out portfolios that hold individual stocks/bonds

That said, speaking from experience here, if you want to work in "true" asset management in the sense of being an analyst at a hedge fund or long only shop, the PWM route is a hard one to break out of since the type of analysis and resulting skillset you gain is not the same as one someone gets by analyzing businesses day in and day out, talking to management teams, etc.  Like, for example, let's take JPM or MS for example.  You might get put on a team that manages individual stock portfolios or does research within the confines of your advisory group, but you're still likely leveraging the efforts of your firm's research department to get insights into the types of businesses/sectors you're going to own.  You wouldn't be sitting on quarterly earnings calls since the equity research coverage will be doing that for you, and it's not a value add to your team to duplicate efforts when they're paying you out of their own revenue vs. leveraging the bank's resources.  At my firm (an RIA), even though we didn't have in-house equity research, we leveraged the big bank research platforms so it still didn't make financial sense for us to internally spend the time really diving deep into our individual holdings.  Even if you gain some relevant skills, you'll be fighting an uphill battle given how the industry is perceived from the outside. 

If you really want to work in AM, I'd recommend shooting your shot at it straight out of undergrad rather than going to PWM first, since PWM is always an option later on and the opposite is not necessarily true.  That said, there are plenty of reputable RIAs and teams within the HNW/UHNW arms of the big wirehouses that might have roles that would scratch your itch and all else equal, should be easier to break into if you network well and find an opening.

 

Excellent post. I've been in PWM for 30 years. Know many who are in AM in different forms. Some in hybrids like a trust company that builds their own portfolios which include individual names and essentially other funds. In general I would conclude those in PWM are more about asset gathering and creating asset allocation models to funnel client money (into). Most of those portfolios will be a collection of managers.

Very different than doing the research to build a fund. AM is a different animal. There are also many roles within AM that might be of interest like product specialists. They're not building the portfolio but they get deep in the analysis and understanding as they are squarely between the portfolio team and the client team. They provide excellent portfolio knowledge and learn a deep understanding of client needs to develop further portfolios. Leave all the asset gathering to the sales team.

 

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