Greg Fleming's Rockefeller Capital wants to grow to as many as 200 high-end advisors. The firm's private wealth head describes his ideal candidate.
- Rockefeller Capital Management's wealth management head, Chris Randazzo, spoke with Business Insider in a keynote interview. He talked about what the firm is looking for in an advisor as its grows its wealth business.
- The firm's division has 30 advisors, and wants to grow to 100-200 advisors over the next five to eight years.
- "We're never going to become thousands of advisors," said Randazzo, who previously held executive roles in the wealth management divisions of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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Rockefeller Capital Management, with Wall Street veteran Greg Fleming at the helm, is looking to grow.
But the New York-headquartered firm isn't looking to add any just advisor to its wealth management arm. The unit's boss, Chris Randazzo, said that one of the qualities he considers in an advisor is how they've arrived at a particular juncture in his or her career.
"What is the reason for them being at the inflection point they are?" he said in a keynote interview with Business Insider in New York this month at an industry event.
"Why do they think their firm is the right fit? What are they looking for in the future? How do they care about their clients, their whole philosophy in the marketplace? And then we also spend a lot of time with them to understand, will they culturally fit with us as a company?"
He added that he wants to make sure advisors are interested in joining the 137-year-old firm for "all the right reasons." Rockefeller is expanding into private wealth and hiring as the broader wealth management industry is undergoing technology-fueled shifts and the US unemployment rate scrapes five-decade lows.
The firm's wealth management unit now houses 30 advisers; Rockefeller aims to grow that to between 100 and 200, in 15 to 20 major cities, over the next five to eight years. By comparison, Morgan Stanley, a much larger player in the space, said on Thursday it had 15,633 wealth representatives at the end of the second quarter.
"We're never going to become thousands of advisors," Randazzo, who had previously held executive roles in the wealth management divisions of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said. He cautioned he doesn't like to focus too much on the firm's hiring timeframe since he cares "more about the quality than the pace."
Randazzo also noted that most of his technology team had only joined the organization earlier this year as it seeks to overhaul its online client wealth offerings.
"We also want advisors that don't just focus on investments," he said, citing Rockefeller's capabilities like trust and estate planning, as well as tax preparation.
Randazzo added: "We look for advisors that are largely doing that today at firms they're in, but they feel like they're not fitting in anymore because of their size."
Ultimately, he's hiring for the long term.
"We want to get an understanding that these advisors and their teams are going to be with us for the next 20 years," he said. "This is not a short-term decision. And that's a big differentiator in the marketplace. Other advisors who get recruited to other firms, they're typically on shorter time frames. We just don't do that. We'll hold very true to who we are now and what we want to become."