The job market remained stagnant this year, both for advisers and wholesalers, according to Russell Reynolds Associates' wealth management recruitment and compensation trends report.
Although there was some hiring in the retail investment space, this was primarily a result of firms replacing people who were displaced during the past two years. The report was released Monday.
Compensation trends are equally flat for everyone except the highest producers. Most advisers aren't yet back to their pre-2008 income levels and most new recruits' first-year deals are falling well short of their 2007 peak.
However, things are at least moving in the right direction in terms of asset growth and that should make for a brighter and more profitable 2011, the report said.
To stand a better chance to be part of that upward trajectory, advisers should position themselves as retirement income specialists, both in front of clients and potential employers, advises George Wilbanks, a managing director at the recruiting firm in New York.
"The evolution away from a returns-based product sale to a solutions-based sale of lifetime income is a major theme" for many banks Russell Reynolds works with, he said.
