Industry participants report that the crisis that swept away two mid-size banks amid flights of deposits and battered bank market valuations has not had a major impact on financial advisors.
According to a Kehrer Group poll conducted over the past week, half the participants indicated that the banking crisis had only a modest impact on advisors. Only 12% feel that the crisis is affecting them a great deal.
| The banking crisis is affecting our business | Respondents | Weighted by Number of Advisors |
| A great deal | 12% | 1% |
| Somewhat | 50% | 49% |
| Not at all | 21% | 8% |
| too soon to tell | 17% | 42% |
We get a clearer picture of the impact on the financial advice community if we weight the respondents by the number of advisors the respondent has visibility into. The respondents supervise or sell through 7,400 advisors. Only 1% of those advisors are seen to be suffering a major setback from the crisis.
As the media continues to report flights of deposits from community banks to larger institutions, and banks of all sizes tighten their lending, the “too soon to tell” group might have it right. And the focus on retaining deposits might feed what Tim Kehrer is starting to call the disintermediation zombies.
The poll was conducted on LinkedIn April 3–10, during Easter, Passover, Ramadan, and many families’ spring vacations. This is essentially a straw poll, which cannot be statistically generalized to the whole community of financial advisors. But it drew from a wide range of participants in the financial advice industry: banks and credit unions (large and small), third party broker dealers, independent broker dealers, product and service providers, and consultants.