Osaic CEO: AI May Ease Advisor Shortage Fears
Osaic CEO Jamie Price hopes the firm’s approximately 9,000 registered assistants (with the help of artificial intelligence) can help stem the tide of a national advisor pool expected to decline precipitously over the coming decade.
During the wealth firm’s annual ConnectED conference in Atlanta this week, Price noted he’d warned audiences about advisor shortages over the past several years, but wonders if that shortage may “not be as big as I once thought in my own mind.”
Price said that, with AI assistance, branch or advisory assistants with the appropriate regulatory certifications may be able to take on more client-facing responsibilities. He expects many of their current responsibilities could be handled by AI in the coming years.
“It’s still going to be a shortage, but maybe we have work to do in helping your assistants actually become much more client-focused, taking more things off our hands faster than we otherwise might have thought about it,” Price said during the conference’s opening session.
Registered assistants’ tasks (and titles) can vary. Still, they typically work to support Osaic advisors in their practice’s daily operations, while often having completed either a Series 7 or FINRA Securities Industry Essentials exam.
Projections on the coming advisor shortage vary (and are highly debated), but a McKinsey & Co. report last year estimated that the advisor population was expected to decline by 0.2% annually over the next decade, with a shortage of roughly 100,000 advisors expected by 2034, when accounting for the rising wealth in the U.S. population and increased willingness to pay for human financial advice.
In an interview with Wealth Management at the conference, Price called the approximately 9,000 registered assistants “another gigantic ecosystem of future advisors.” He said firms should prioritize getting everyone on their team registered, and that training, rather than licensing, would be the larger hurdle.
“Everybody on your team should be registered because they’re likely going to be able to deal with clients to pick up some of this capacity and not have to do some of the work they do today,” he said.
Cindy Hamel, who recently left her role heading Osaic’s W-2 employee channel for the newly created role as head of business operations and executive, said many advisors get much of their business through referrals, and may have to turn away business due to office inefficiencies.
Hamel said registered assistants already work with clients “in a maintenance capacity,” but if the firm can automate more of their administrative tasks, it leaves them with an “embedded base to upskill into becoming that next-gen advisor.”
It also means that a registered assistant has a built-in client base if they decide to take the next step toward becoming an advisor, while also freeing up more time for senior advisors, according to Hamel.
“It lets them prospect more, or take on those referrals they’ve been turning away because then there’s a segment of their client population that can be served just as well with people that are already servicing them in another capacity,” she said.
However, removing administrative tasks from an assistant’s plate (and therefore enabling them to do the same for advisors) relies on AI bridging the gap.
In his opening remarks, Price emphasized the importance of scale, touting Osaic’s ascent to a major, scaled player in the industry. In his assessment of the industry’s next five years, he argued that firms without scale risk being in a situation where their competitors “get to be so large at your expense” and “can outspend you and put you out of business,” he warned.
But scale also matters with AI, stressing that firms need to be large enough to make the investments required to spread AI solutions throughout the firm.
“We joke about this internally. Someone said, ‘Well, you should run even faster, Jamie, in your investments in AI,’” Price recalled. “You tell me what token costs are going to be in the next five years, and I’ll tell you how fast I feel comfortable running.”
