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Banking, Financial Services and Insurance · Wealth management firms
HR for Wealth Management Firms: Advisers, Relationships and Retention
A wealth management firm is a small team of advisers and analysts whose clients trust individuals more than the brand. Clients tend to follow the adviser, so written client ownership, a visible pay-share method and a route for juniors protect the firm.
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Share your requirementsA wealth management firm looks after the savings of families and individuals through advice, portfolio management or distribution of investment products. The team is small: relationship managers who own the client conversation, research and product analysts, operations staff who handle onboarding and reporting, and a few partners or senior leaders. Clients tend to follow their adviser, so people moves carry a business risk. Pay mixes a salary with a share of fees or business brought in, and careers are shaped by how soon an associate can hold a client book. See also HR for banking, financial services and insurance.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in wealth management firms, you may see
- Clients follow the adviser
- Who owns the client is never written
- Juniors wait too long
- Pay splits cause quiet grievance
- Partners do everything
- Operations staff are overlooked
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in wealth management firms
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
- Partners and senior wealth managers
- Relationship managers
- Research and portfolio analysts
- Client service associates
- Operations and reporting staff
- Compliance and administration staff
- Business development staff
Where HR strains in wealth management firms
Clients follow the adviser
When a relationship manager leaves, part of the book may go too, so the firm feels hostage to its top performers.
Who owns the client is never written
Partners, relationship managers and the firm each assume the client is theirs, and the argument starts at resignation.
Juniors wait too long
Associates do the analysis and the paperwork for years before holding any client, and the ambitious ones go to firms that promise a book sooner.
Pay splits cause quiet grievance
A share of fees or new business is rarely explained, and teammates compare notes and suspect unfairness.
Partners do everything
Senior people sell, advise, hire and settle disputes, and HR is whatever is left over at the end of a busy week.
Operations staff are overlooked
Onboarding, reporting and reconciliation teams keep the clients happy but have no visible career, and good ones leave.
HR topics for wealth management firms
Start with the topics that matter most here: Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; Career and Succession Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for banking, financial services and insurance, not in general.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a wealth management firms business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Write down client ownership and handover
A firm position on whose client is whose, how a book is shared or moved, and what a handover looks like.
What this coversHide
Write down client ownership and handover
A firm position on whose client is whose, how a book is shared or moved, and what a handover looks like.
What this coversHideA firm position on whose client is whose, how a book is shared or moved, and what a handover looks like. Confirm restrictive terms with a qualified professional, and draw on the HR documentation process.
Show how pay shares are calculated
A simple, written formula for fee or business shares, with a statement for each person.
What this coversHide
Show how pay shares are calculated
A simple, written formula for fee or business shares, with a statement for each person.
What this coversHideA simple, written formula for fee or business shares, with a statement for each person. See compensation and rewards strategy.
Offer a staged route to a client book
Defined steps from associate to a first small group of clients to a full book, with conditions for each step, using career and succession work.
What this coversHide
Offer a staged route to a client book
Defined steps from associate to a first small group of clients to a full book, with conditions for each step, using career and succession work.
What this coversHideDefined steps from associate to a first small group of clients to a full book, with conditions for each step, using career and succession work.
Give operations a career ladder
Levels, skills and pay for onboarding, reporting and service staff, set out through role design and job descriptions.
What this coversHide
Give operations a career ladder
Levels, skills and pay for onboarding, reporting and service staff, set out through role design and job descriptions.
What this coversHideLevels, skills and pay for onboarding, reporting and service staff, set out through role design and job descriptions.
Pass routine HR from partners to a person
A named owner for hiring, reviews and records, whether an internal person or fractional HR.
What this coversHide
Pass routine HR from partners to a person
A named owner for hiring, reviews and records, whether an internal person or fractional HR.
What this coversHideA named owner for hiring, reviews and records, whether an internal person or fractional HR.
Start by checking where you stand
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirements- Write who is treated as the owner of each of your top twenty clients, and compare with what your partners think.
- Ask each associate what they believe the route to a first client book is.
- Check that every relationship manager can explain their last pay share calculation.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the registration, conduct and employment obligations that apply to your advisory business.
Confirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
How GullyHR helps
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
- Compensation and rewards strategy
Fee and business shares that people can follow and defend.
- Succession and leadership development
A staged route from associate to partner that keeps ambitious people.
- Fractional HR management
Part-time HR ownership for a firm too small for a full-time person.
- HR documentation process
Written client-handover and ownership terms that avoid disputes at exit.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in banking, financial services and insurance, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Management
Salary bands for SMEs: building grades when you have never had any
Most salary structures grew one negotiation at a time. How to build grades and bands from what you already pay, without repricing everybody at once.
8 min readRead article
HR Management
"What if this person resigned tomorrow?" A succession exercise for small companies
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
HR Management
How to recognise and address employee workload problems
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Share the relationship across a team, record client contact in a firm system, offer real career prospects and agree handover terms in advance. Seek professional advice on what restrictions are enforceable.
A salary that covers a decent living plus a share linked to the fees or business they bring, with a written formula and a regular statement. Clarity matters more than the exact percentage.
Define the role clearly, ask for a short case or discussion of how the candidate would handle a client situation, and meet them more than once. A poor hire in a team of ten is very visible.
What skills and results lead to a first client group, how long that usually takes at your firm and how they will be told they are on track.
No. GullyHR works only on the people side of your firm: hiring, pay design, careers and HR processes.
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