The search for young blood

Look at our industry, you know, the average age of the advisors at TD Ameritrade is 54 years and rising, and we need to bring young blood, young folks into the practices of our advisors to handle that transfer of wealth. Young people, generation Y wanna work with people they're on age, that they grew up with, understand their wants and needs and you need to have those folks in advisory offices to accomplish that. -You know, I think what we found is that that next generation as they enter the business, they're willing to work hard, they wanna work hard, they don't necessarily wanna be in a bricks and mortar office for 40 hours a week. So, by utilizing mobile tools and other technologies that allow them to achieve a little bit more of a life work balance, they're able to bring in, you know, significant employees that can help manage the firm. And that's been, you know, really one of the things that we've been trying to help advisors with. Utilize technology in your recruiting efforts, utilizing technology as part of your retention with employees and ultimately it becomes one of the key practices on developing that next generation of leader for the firm. -We really see our role as trying to help advisors take advantage of some of the macro economic trends sort of taking place. You know, the shift in wealth, you know, both from a demographic perspective with next generation investors and next generation advisors, as well as women investors, you know, controlling $8 trillion today, expected $22 trillion by the end of the decade. So, we wanna help advisors make the strategic shifts in their business to be able to capitalize on those opportunities. So, there are few things that we rolled out today that we're very excited about. First, there's a next generation scholarship program where we're gonna award $5,000 scholarships to 10 students in financial planning programs. We think we need to do a better job of fostering the next generation advisors through education and other types of engagement. The other part of that is a $50,000 annual grant to a university that demonstrates excellence in financial planning education and we think that the competition for the grant will help create a little, you know, some innovation and some further investments in financial planning education. -We're really helping our advisors to understand, you know, what do they need to do to attract that next advisor to their firm. What do they need to do to retain that next advisor? And what do they need to do to really develop that next group of leaders? Because when they leave their practice, it's going to be an ongoing concern after they're gone and this was really helping them to develop that next group of leaders who were gonna be able to continue with the practice. -These financial planning programs are also cropping up all across the country, you know, visit those programs, the dean of that program and see, you know, where can we get the next generation come into that office. And then, just be open-minded, you know, we talked a little bit about that generational gap. There's certainly a different mindset between the bloomers and the next generation, gen X and gen Y and how the work together, and just be open-minded. You know, they grew up with technology, they grew up with having folks constantly giving them recognition and you have to change the way that you approach, you know, talking to the next generation to really be successful in recruiting those folks. You can't start today and bring young folks into your office and not have a couple of years lag time to get them up to speed. So, you really do have to start now, you know, to really be ready for when that wealth transfer takes its place.