Fidelity teams with Manpower to bolster RIA efforts to staff up

Fidelity Investments stepped up its efforts to help its 3,000 RIA clients with complex hiring issues by signing a deal with Manpower Business Solutions, a division of Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) group of companies. The deal is a sign of the renewed interest by advisory firms in hiring, which executives at all of the custodians say they have seen.

Advisors will get a discount on Manpower’s consulting and recruiting services, such as talent management, employee retention and engagement, organizational effectiveness and compensation.

Advisors also have access to the firm’s HR and talent management best practices, research and insights. Advisors have to pay for Manpower but they receive a discount as high as 20% for all consulting and search services provided through the Fidelity relationship.

A recent Fidelity study showed that 60% of the RIAs surveyed are actively looking to acquire new advisors. Some 73% of these advisors say that adding new advisors includes recruiting breakaway brokers.

Seattle to LA

David E. Canter, executive vice president and head of Practice Management and Consulting at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, who is overseeing the deal, says that he was also persuaded by a recent trip he took to see big RIAs on the West Coast from Seattle to south of Los Angeles.

“Of the firms I was meeting, virtually all were hiring again. It’s not just business development folks; its operational needs to propel the growth,” he said.

Schwab Advisor Services initially made a big push toward this hiring aspect of practice management before the market crash. The custodian is focusing on it again, according to Scott Slater, managing director, business consulting for Schwab.

Schwab keeps it in-house

A mainstay of Schwab’s efforts, besides workshops and whitepapers, is specialized training of its service staff to RIAs. The advantage of keeping the task in the realm of these service personnel is that they tend to know the firms they work with and so they are well-positioned to try to fit hires into the cultures of the companies they work with, according to Lindsay Tiles, a spokeswoman for Schwab.

Slater says that his company also contracts with outside firms on behalf of RIA firms for specialized purposes like the design of compensation plans.

TD Ameritrade also handles practice management issues around hiring by providing the services internally.

“Through the successful Roadmap program, which launched in 2009, our business consultants can help firms address hiring and training. And for firms seeking to merge with or acquire new advisors, the TD Ameritrade PracticeLink program provides firms access to a pool of candidates looking to join an existing RIA firm,” says Kristin Petrick, spokeswoman for the firm.

Pershing Advisor Solutions offers firms access to a dozen consultants and vendors like Diamond Consultants and Turning Point for recruiting, Broker to Broker for onboarding, and Aon Consulting, Lenox Advisors and TriNet for retention. See: Why Mindy Diamond is morphing her firm away from pure wirehouse recruiting

Canter of Fidelity says that one of the reasons that his company chose Manpower – perhaps best known for placing technical workers into firms — is that it has specialized knowledge in wealth management and, in fact, has worked closely with several RIAs that use Fidelity as a custodian.

Manpower recruiters screen more than 50,000 wealth management candidates annually on behalf of their clients. As a result, they have some of the most successful financial services recruiters in the industry,” Fidelity writes in a release.

Manpower not known for exec searches

Curtis Coles, principal with People Capital Inc. of Denver, Colo., believes advisors may be better off with specialized firms like his over national firms like Manpower.

“Manpower is particularly strong for administrative positions and part-time staffers. However, they have not been known to be strong for executive searches, nor do they work exclusively in financial services.”

Jerry Luff, senior managing director and chief operating officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management of San Francisco, uses Manpower to match staffing needs with an aggressive national plan for growth in assets. Baker originally worked with a company called Veritude until it was acquired by Manpower.

Baker Avenue has 17 employees spread out to Seattle, New York, Boston and Dallas in addition to its California headquarters. It has hired two or three employees annually for the past five years, but it’s not bringing people aboard that’s the issue, Luff says.

Org charts

“We never had to recruit. We’re mostly looking at long-term strategy, organizational charts and job descriptions for the next few years in line with our goals for AUM.” Baker Avenue manages about $550 million of assets.

He says that Fidelity also continues to make heavy use of its own relationship managers.

“This week our relationship manager was in our office for four hours shadowing what we do,” he says.