There are only 300,000 financial advisors in the US, with half expected to retire soon, even as $68 trillion flows into the market. Jon Lavin argues the industry needs to recruit and license passionate advisors, not just hire unlicensed staff. Building a strong firm requires a solid foundation of qualified people first.
There's 2 million attorneys and 1 million doctors, and you've got only 300,000 financial advisors with securities licenses, and the average age is 58 years old, and 50% of them will be retiring in the next decade. So you got $68 trillion flooding into the market, there's only 300,000 without people to help them. So are you starting to get the idea why are we recruiting? You're recruiting large numbers of people to find people that want to fall in love with helping people with their money and will get licensed. To recruit a lot of people who don't get licensed makes no sense. Makes no— yeah, you can make some sales, but it makes no sense. So we want to start to look at what is it that we really deliver. I mean, we build these financial houses. It's very simple, very simple situation. If you want to build any kind of structure, you start with what? Foundation.
