If you’ve been curious about changing broker dealers, congratulations.  Your timing could be great. 

Here are 3 reasons why right now might be the ideal time to make a move.

Broker Dealers Have Figured Out The Answer To “What Now?”

With the shut down of travel and limits to direct human interactions that came along with quarantine back in March, many BDs found themselves with lots of ammo missing from their recruiting arsenal.

How do you build trust with an advisor you’ve never met?  How do you “wine and dine”  someone you can’t be within 6 feet of?

It took a while, but a lot of the top BDs have figured out how to provide a  meaningful experience to advisors from a distance.  Through online events (click link to learn more and register for October 13th event), physical mailings, and leveraging networks.  BDs are starting to bridge the COVID divide and data on AdvisorHub shows that summer was a “success” for many. (read our story here). 

LPL Created A “You Got Your Peanut Butter In My Chocolate” Moment

You might remember Reese’s commercial from the 80’s where two 20-somethings have an “accident“, magically bringing together the chocolate and peanut butter – and voila, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were born.

LPL tried to recreate that  with the rollout of their Independent Employee Channel.  Their attempt to answer the question,  which is better (W-2 or independent) by offering a third option.  Though  still in its infancy,  our guess is it will likely have other BDs scrambling to introduce their own versions.

Let’s Face It – We Aren’t Going Anywhere Soon

 Even the most optimistic reports show a return to “normal” is still a ways off.

The upside of this is that your clients, who you most need to connect with, in order to shift assets, will likely continue to be more reachable.

Advisors who have changed broker-dealers in the past few months have noted this upside and it will be interesting to see in our next advisor transition survey if this positively impacted the % of assets moved to new BDs.

As we said before, advisors should look at this moment as an opportunity to prepare for future growth.  Sitting still waiting for the sky to fall serves no purpose at all.

If you are curious about changing broker-dealers you can secure multiple offers all while remaining 100% anonymous by clicking here.