More information on an internal wholesaler route at a large AM
Hey Guys,
I'm wondering if anyone can shed more light on the internal wholesaler role at an Asset Management firm like BlackRock, PIMCO, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc. What does day-to-day look like on an internal desk? What kinds of paths do people on the internal desk take other than external wholesaling? Do people go straight onto the desk out of UG or is there an in-between? Is the role purely sales or are there some analytical elements to it? Any info would be appreciated.
It's mostly sales. One of my bosses is an internal wholesaler, and is pretty much a relationship manager. The most analytical thing that he has ever done is run a comp. Can't say that is the way it is at every firm, but just from my experience that's the way it has been.
The most obvious path like you mentioned is from Internal to External on a retail desk. But this is not always the case. People can have move to other roles within distribution, whether it be on the Institutional/Consultant Relations, DC, or National Accounts side in a variety of roles such as relationship management or business development. These roles could in theory be "external" but would be different than the traditional retail meaning of it. Another area that internals can move to is the Product side-which is an interesting route if you want to shift out of a pure sales type role. As for whats possible, it really depends on the firm. Some have more structured channels and it is harder to move around, whereas others have it almost act as a stepping stone to other areas of the firm; but this is very firm dependent and regardless the primary way of moving up is the internal-external route. A majority of the large shops have undergrad recruiting but I don't know of any that place you directly on the desk, most from what I have seen will put you through training and then you'll sit on the inbound desk until you are moved up to internal. I've heard that it can take anywhere from 3 months to over a year depending on the firm and a variety of factors, however I cant speak to this myself.
This is really helpful. Do you have any idea how the compensation structure works once you get promoted from inbound/training to the internal desk?
We had a couple kids move from internal to product in my department here at a top 20 firm. They took a paycut to get off the desk. They had about five years experience, and had previously proved that they knew our ETFs well. I'm going to say that it's not common, but not unheard of.
Thanks for the response. Do you know which firms in NYC have internal desks? I've done a fair amount of research but the role is called different things depending on what firm you're looking at. Something like "national advisor consultant" could mean a similar job to internal wholesaler (from what I've seen).
Virtually everyone has an internal desk, the question is where it's located. You basically need to commit to virtually 100% direct to consumer sales if you don't have wholesalers, and that is very tough to do, especially at any sort of scale.
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