The Wealth Advisor Attrition Problem – In Conversation With Broadridge

Tom Burroughes

15 September 2025

There’s a drive to make wealth advice more scalable and efficient for various reasons, and one of the most salient is that more people are quitting the industry than entering it.

In January last year, Cerulli Associates said that over the next decade, 109,093 advisors plan to retire – more than a third of industry headcount and a whopping 41.5 per cent of total assets. Another concern flagged by Cerulli is that the “rookie failure rate” hovers around 72 per cent – showing that a lot of entrants don’t, for various reasons, stay in the industry. The report said, “the number of new advisors barely offsets trainee failures and retirements, emphasizing the critical need for the industry to attract and retain talent.”

With such a “low success rate for new advisors,” firms must grow their talent pipeline and communicate more effectively what being a financial advisor involves, the Cerulli report continued.

This is not a new or isolated warning, of course. Family Wealth Report has come across concerns about a talent crunch in North America, and in other parts of the world. And part of the reason why there’s so much interest in technologies, including AI, is the hope that new machines and systems – such as “co-pilots” or “digital assistants” – will take away the manual chores. Hopefully, this means that advisors will be able to concentrate on building business rather than being overwhelmed by paperwork.

At technology firm Broadridge Financial Solutions – already interviewed about such topics – scalability is central.

“My main focus is supporting advisors to grow their business at scale,” Kristy Smith, general manager on the wealth management team at Broadridge, told FWR in a recent call. Most advisors in the US are aged between 55 and 65; many advisors are set to retire in the coming decade, she continued.

“We are not seeing wealth advisors enter the workforce as fast as they are retiring ,” she said.

Getting scalability right is important for achieving profitable business models without losing a personal touch, Smith continued.

The wealth management sector, given its close links to the rising wealth and opportunities in business, must do more to appeal to undergraduates and others looking for an interesting career, Smith said. “It is more about getting a message out that there are opportunities in this industry. We must be out there advocating.”

The industry must also become more innovative if it is to prosper when financial markets hit difficulties, as is inevitable. A Boston Consulting Group report earlier in 2025, for example, identified a “critical weakness” – slow organic growth in assets under management. “The forces that powered asset growth over the past decade are shifting. Bull markets have softened. M&A integrations remain complex and costly. And firms that once expanded by hiring seasoned advisors and absorbing their books are now confronting diminishing returns: experienced advisors are in short supply, and nearly half of new hires fail to deliver their initially agreed business case. As a result, organic growth matters more than ever,” BCG said.

Against that background, the points made by Smith about how to help advisors scale up have added urgency. She’s confident, however, that progress can be made.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given how it earns a living, Broadridge has raised the banner about the need for tech change before. For example, in April, it issued a report saying that almost half of the 500 industry figures it had polled said that legacy tech made their businesses vulnerable. Almost half of executives think that at its current rate their technology strategy is not moving fast enough and 46 per cent think that legacy tech is hurting resilience.

Smith appears to relish the challenges and is a self-declared financial services fan; it was a sector she wanted to be in when she was in college. “Wall Street always interested me – even in my teenage years!” she said.

Prior to Broadridge, which she joined seven years ago, she spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs – in some ways the ultimate example of Wall Street prowess. At Goldman Sachs, Smith said she learned a “passion for accuracy” and providing high quality service and products. And back in the middle of the last decade, Smith said, she saw how the center of gravity in financial services was shifting toward wealth management.

“It was right to change and it was a sector I wanted to learn from,” Smith continued.

Personal touch
Wealth managers must explore different ways of connecting with clients. One area that Smith warmed to in her conversation with FWR was the topic of financial literacy. “I think financial literacy is at the top of everyone’s mind.”

“We need to think about how clients want to receive information and cater to how they want to learn,” she continued. Broadridge can produce financial modeling tools to help advisors explain a financial journey for clients, based on different goals and circumstances.

Broadridge carries out regular meetings with users to keep in touch with what clients want from technology; an invaluable guide is its own database showing what users are clicking on and what they’re not using, Smith said.

“From a wealth management perspective, it is unified data…we have data from across the industry and how to make that data into a powerful engine for all our clients,” she said. For example, advisors can see what sales leads translate into a new client. The firm operates an “ask, listen and respond” mentality, Smith concluded.