“Remote inspection of everything, back to the definition of office and branch.”
These three themes “come up in almost every meeting I have with member firms,” said Kayte Toczylowski, vice president of membership and education at the brokerage industry regulator.Her words were spoken in an interview with FINRA chief executive Robert Cook Day 2 of FINRA’s annual meeting this week in Washington, D.C.
But the work-from-home problem in wealth management doesn’t just apply to the nearly 3,400 brokerage firms that FINRA directly regulates.Remote work issues persist A topic of keen concern to people from all walks of life in the wealth management industryincluding more than 35,000 investment advisors registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Scoop is a company that helps corporate clients arrange remote work, report of the month Only 20% of financial services firms require their employees to be in the office every working day. The survey, conducted through a poll of 251 industry companies, found that 41 percent of respondents allow their employees to spend part of their working hours outside the office.that’s despite A headline-grabbing boost from industry giants like JPMorgan Insist that employees start coming back.
“I don’t know how much better your life will be”
For many financial planners, the new ability to work from home brought about by COVID-19 marks a welcome change in their day-to-day work. Chris Ward, founder of EntryPoint Wealth Management in Edgewood, Kentucky, said that before the pandemic, he spent at least an hour a day commuting to and from his former employer in nearby Cincinnati, a financial services firm he declined to name. In low traffic, the drive can take an hour and a half.
He quit that job in 2020 to start EntryPoint, a company that ran out of an attached garage at his home. The change, Ward says, allows him to work when he feels most energized and productive — usually 7 a.m. to noon, rather than the usual 9-to-5. He has an agreement with a separate office whose address he can use for mailing and marketing purposes.
Many of his clients tend to be older but still prefer to meet in person. So he’d arrange to sit down at a local coffee shop. Ward said he really doesn’t see any downside to his new work arrangement.
“I don’t know how much better your life will be,” he said. “I hope that’s something I tend to pursue early on.”
While hybrid and fully remote schedules may now be entrenched in the wealth management industry, there are no trade-offs. From potential alienating clients to compliance concerns, long-distance hiring has its own drawbacks.
Here are some tips and practices other industry representatives and experts have adopted to enable remote work over the past three years:
