It’s back to school for advisors
It’s no secret that the wealth management industry faces a head count problem driven by a wave of expected retirements of older advisors, a trend that continues to generate discussions and worries within the industry. One of the key strategies that will help ensure the future of financial planning advice is attracting and retaining talent.
Several firms are putting in place educational programs to help solve the problem. Wealth Enhancement Group, an RIA with $75 billion in assets under management, developed a program, “Wealth Enhancement Group University,” which educates and strengthens the firm’s rising advisor talent by building cohorts of junior advisors to learn and collaborate.
Kris Carroll, co-founder of the program and managing director at Wealth Enhancement Group, who’s also a second-generation advisor, says that while the firm’s advisors will go through courses in the program, it’s ultimately for second-generation advisors who are about to take over a business and serve as a team leader for the first time.
“There’s a big difference in being a team leader and being a financial advisor or a team member,” he says.
The courses are designed to be small study groups of up to 10 advisors, though Carroll says they currently have as many as 32. They’re all built around the soft skills of financial planning and can be taken as often as advisors wish. However, the actual duration of the program is no more than eight to 10 weeks.
The two most popular courses are those that focus on emotional intelligence and practice management, Carroll said. “They’ve just been super popular, and we realized more people need this,” he said. “We’re going to try to really dig in and replicate and redo those two [courses] and try to get them
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