Kehrer Group Highlighter
The Kehrer Group Highlighter packages some of our most important findings, insights, and commentary into bite-size, digestible articles. We make the Highlighters available for free to the entire financial advice community—a small gesture of appreciation for a community that has done so much to support our work.
The Latest Highlighters
Bank-Based Advisors Are Doing More Planning, But More Progress Is Needed
That was a central theme of the eighth annual Kehrer study group on developing holistic advisors. The first afternoon the group dissected the conflicting data on whether banks and credit unions are making progress on increasing advisor planning productivity and plan...
Financial Institutions Added Advisors in 2023, but Did They Keep Pace with the Growth if the Banking Business?
Kehrer Group research has demonstrated repeatedly that financial institutions tend to be under repped—they have too few financial advisors given their opportunity. Not only is adding advisors the most direct way to grow the retail wealth management business, adding...
Bank-Based Advisors Struggle to Grow Assets
Robust Asset Acquisition Dissipated by Asset Attrition As the business of financial advice has shifted from generating transaction revenue to asset-based compensation, asset growth has become an increasingly important metric for directors of retail wealth management...
An Advisor Goes to Work at a Bank…
Thanks to Chris Cassidy for highlighting the advantages of pursuing a financial advice career in a bank or credit union – access to the institution’s customers/members, the institution’s brand and marketing prowess, and the professional associations: Four Reasons to...
Rightsizing Bank-Based Advisor Books:
A Mixed Report Card The branch referral model at the core of most bank and credit union retail wealth management businesses has resulted in advisors stockpiling clients to the point that serving all of them is problematic; either many clients are underserved, or they...
Branch Referral Flow Stabilizes, but Remains Low
Existential Challenge to Retail Wealth Management in Financial Institutions Referrals from client facing branch staff are the foundation of retail wealth management in banks and credit unions. Access to the institution’s customers/members has helped the...
Counting Metrics
Kudos to David Lincoln for responding to Peter Bielan’s charge to name the five metrics needed to manage wealth management in a financial institution during a recent BISA webinar. That is a challenging task, which is why the metrics we track in our benchmarking...
Managed Programs Rising?
Kehrer Group Influencers Are Divided on the Trend We have heard buzz around the rising prevalence of "managed programs" in which the broker dealer assumes management and compensation responsibilities for the financial institution's advisors. Our most recent...
More Credit Unions Are Offering Financial Advice
Kehrer Group Annual Checkup Finds Credit Unions Overtaking Banks According to this year’s Kehrer Group Annual Industry Checkup, the number of credit unions providing investment services continued its slow but steady climb during 2023. Registered financial...
Boxed Out of the Advisor Recruiting Pool, Financial Institutions Return to Licensing Bankers
Advisor Extenders Pose Omni Channel Management Challenges The Kehrer Group 2023-2024 Annual Industry Checkup underscored the long-term reliance of financial institutions on advisor productivity gains to drive growth in the wake of flat advisor headcount. ...