It seems that part of that “Silver Tsunami” heading into retirement is made up of financial advisers.
Cerulli Associates reports that the number of U.S. financial advisers fell for the fifth straight year in 2014. Reuters reports that the industry has lost more than 39,000 advisers, roughly 12%, since its peak in 2008, when there were 325,000 advisers. There were roughly 285,000 financial advisers in 2014 – down 1.9% from the year before, which matched the rate of decrease from 2012 to 2013.
Nearly half of all financial advisers are already over the age of 55; nearly 100,000 brokers will retire over the next decade, Cerulli expects.
Only two segments of the wealth management industry saw their sales force increase: registered investment advisors (RIA) and dually registered or hybrid advisers, who operate independent firms that collect fees on a client's assets and commissions on securities trades. The market share of these two channels is likely to move up from 20% of total assets in 2013 to 28% in 2018, according to Cerulli.
