To sell more products through financial advisers, Fidelity Investments is reorganizing hundreds of its employees, it announced Monday.
The centerpiece of the reorganization is a "client experience organization" in its institutional division that is designed to give independent advisers, broker-dealers, traders and family offices a single point of contact.
The company said this initiative, which is to be run by Maggie Serravalli, will operate across each of its institutional businesses, Fidelity institutional wealth services, National Financial, Fidelity family office services and Fidelity capital markets. It is to support more than 4,000 institutional client firms from the initial sales process to day-to-day interactions and continuing relationship management.
Fidelity said it plans to introduce service teams for the registered investment adviser clients of Fidelity institutional wealth services. Each team is to have a client service manager and professionals at a single site that handle everything for an adviser.
Serravalli said the "team-based approach," which will initially affect employees in its offices in Westlake, Texas, and Smithfield, R.I., would give RIAs a single point of contact supported by a group of "subject-matter experts."
"We think more collaborative thinking will help our clients," she said.
Analysts said that, in the past five to eight years, Fidelity's market share has slumped as investors began buying more investment products through financial advisers rather than directly from providers like Fidelity. Aite Group, a Boston research firm, said Fidelity increased its assets under custody held with registered investment advisers by 34.5% last year, to $390 billion, but continued to trail the brokerage unit of Charles Schwab Corp., which grew 22.4% last year, to $590 billion.
When it comes to building share with advisers, said Burton Greenwald of BJ Greenwald & Associates, Fidelity "has always been playing catch-up."
"Fidelity has shuffled personnel a couple times, and they just can't seem to find the combination that advisers want," he said. "They have made major personnel changes in their institutional business, but they are still trailing Schwab by a wide margin. Ultimately, I think Fidelity can be effective with RIAs. They are a powerful organization that is dedicating resources and capital to building more business with RIAs. They will at some point get the share that they are looking for."
Fidelity said that, since testing began, 97% of client requests have been completed within the agreed upon period. "Not-in-good-order items," such as account applications, were cut by nearly 50%.
