Morgan Stanley intends to add one million of the stock-plan investors it acquired from purchasing Solium Capital Inc.’s stock plan business into wealth management relationships. The American multinational investment bank and financial services company is looking to complete this process over the next five to seven years via a variety of offerings on the company’s growing platform.
It has been almost a year since Morgan Stanley purchased Solium Capital’s stock plan business for about $900 million, but according to a presentation it made earlier this month, the company has only moved 5,000 of those stock-plan investors to wealth management.
Morgan Stanley’s goal is to grab younger clients as well as tech startups to its stock-plan administration business. The firm hopes that this will drive its advisors to grab about $2 trillion in its customers’ assets that are currently held outside of the firm.
This continues the theme across the financial advisory sector that has seen major players move away from recruiting seasoned financial advisors. The goal is to remove the costly and labor-intensive process of bringing on the more experienced advisors, and instead using technology and training to grow the profits of those already employed by the company.
The goal for Morgan Stanley is to become a one-stop shop for their clients’ financial lives. Therefore, they’ve added more service for their 401(k) participants as well as taken various other steps to try to leverage workplace access to grow its wealth management business.
As money continues to switch hands to the millennial generation, technology is seen more and more as the best way to capture new, younger clients. Morgan Stanley believes that if they can make their advisors embrace new technology and continue to build out their own platforms, their one-stop shop will relate best to those clients. The company has gone so far as to make a revised pay plan that encourages advisors to adapt new technology.
It seems like a process that may be working as Morgan Stanley’s wealth management business reported record net revenues for 2019.
