Good luck!

We started with 26 brokers and are now down to 13. What a great sh*t show. If only there were more wirehouses for people to cut checks to.    Does anyone know if we are keeping our Branches? I would assume since everything is for the benefit of ML advisors the next shoe to drop for us BAI brokers is the loss of our last source of referrals (branches).

Dude, you’re not seeing the whole picture here, we’re bankers now. The Merrill guys will get all of the investment leads while we get mired in banking products. I heard that the Merrill guys don’t want to refer bank products to their clients because they are afraid it will tie the clients to the bank and then they too will get bogged down in this crap. We are the new CMs, get used to it.

Why not switch over to Merrill, guys?

We technically aren’t even supposed to talk to each other yet. No internal transfers at least for now.

It’s our clients that make us BAI. We have raised their expectations and sold them on the relationship. Just because our genius leadership has abandoned the model doesn’t mean that our clients are gong to lower their expectations. The Merrill guys never set the bar so high when it comes to banking and don’t do near the volume of transactions that our clients do. Clients are not happy. This was a shortsighted decision that will come back to bite them in the arse.

Bonehead- If they were going to make the BAI reps bankers (who by the way don’t have a clue on processing a mortgage application) why did they let go of 85% of the Premier bankers that only do mortgages and CDs? If they wanted the BAI brokers to do bank products for everyone they would have put you on a salary by now and not paid you a retention bonus.

The whole point was to reduce salaries. We’re still paid based on gross production and even if they pay us a few bps on bank products, they still come out way ahead. How much do you think they saved by eliminating all of those salaries? How much more do you think you will make this year? Now think about the difference, it’s huge. They’re getting us to do two jobs while paying us for one.

I get that…and I get that I am working three times as hard for the same money.   I do like the fact that the client has one contact for everything (me or my assistant).  At that point the client is then my client not the “banks.” Only time will tell how this all works out…I think eventually (like 18 months) it will work out.  

BAI is going to be a mood point in 18 months.

B0nehead: Yes, Bank of America saved money by getting rid of CM salaries.  But CM's were never worth the salaries that they made so what they actually did is stem the losses.  It was a redundant position that did little to the bottom line of the bank.  Imagine if B of A hired 2,000 Sales Assistants tomorrow to service existing clients.  And then fired all of them a year later.  Were the Sales Assistants really integral to the relationship?  And did the Bank "save" money by firing the Sales Assistants?  It's more like the Bank had an awful one year experiment and wasted a lot of money and finally decided to cut their losses. 

Why don’t BAI and Merrill guys just move to Edward Jones?

I agree that the old model wasn’t working well, but that’s not an indictment of the CMs, but rather the model itself. They should have trimmed the CM ranks by half, and gotten rid of at least half of the non-qualified clients. They never should have had a $250k mortgage as a qualifier. In my area homeless people pay that for a refrigerator box. Anyway, you can’t tell me that a good salesperson with a book of highly qualified clients couldn’t justify their existence. CMs are being paid 9 bps on mortgages with little flexibility to lower the rates. Even a crummy MLO can get paid 50 bps on their mortgages and they have the ability to lower their rate. That’s like $50k on $12M in mortgages. Let’s see what I did today…I ordered checks, I helped a client who had a question on a HELOC, a client called about a W-9, and another client called about a mysterious transaction on her account and the 800# wasn’t able to help to her satisfaction so they suggested she call me. Oh and I gave a client rates on a fixed rate option because my BS was too busy to call them when he said he would. Maybe this will work for you guys, but it aint what I signed on for. Enjoy your new career.

Yup Bonehead,



The amount of service work for bank related products has accelerated in the last week. That’s all I have been doing this week…ordering checks, quoting cd rates, transferring funds…etc. My clients have been apologizing because they know I’m not suppose to be doing this but the hold times are 20+ minutes on that shat 800 number.   We have become Financial Adbankers!

Jesus do you guys want some cheese with that wine! Grow some nuts and tell the clients who are not profitable or don’t want to talk about options besides there CD’s to go $hit in a hat. I think the new model is great! I get to talk with new prospects and if there is no opportunity then ba bye. For my profitable clients the I’ll suck it up and call the PRC.

Oh if you need some tissues let me know and I’ll send you a box LOL just kidding

Bonehead and OMAR I agree 100%.    BAI? yes you are right about getting the nonprofitable clients out however even though tthe CM’s were a loss on paper they were able to attract and keep wealthy clients at the bank. If you have a good client that is experiencing fraud the CM would usually hold there hand and make things right. Now we have to either pass things on the PRC which is a waste of time. We have to do it ourselves to ensure our good client does not get sick of getting the run around and next thing you know he is transferring out because of something you have no control over. I personally think this new model will be a complete failure in 12 months. I love how the articles talk about ML advisors getting 500 leads.   Don;t they realize that we as advisors already sat down with those prospects who want nothing to do with investments. Eventually ML will realize they are getting nothing but wood.

This question is for ML FA's:  How do the fees in your fee based platform work?  Do you get paid quarterly like BAI or monthly like Wachovia?  Also, when you open a brand new fee based account do you get the first year fee's fronted to you all at once or do you have to wait for the inception fee and regular quarterly fees to hit? 

Apr 15, 2009 9:56 AM, By Kristen French

Bank of America is in the process of rolling out a client referral program for its global wealth management division, which includes Merrill Lynch and the bank’s former Banking & Investments division (BAI), with a combined 18,000 financial advisors. BofA launched a pilot for the program in three states in early March, and will take the program national in the next 30 to 60 days. It is one of several referral programs the bank is putting together as part of its integration with Merrill Lynch, including one that would offer leads from the commercial banking division to certain Merrill Lynch advisors. ...

BAI turning into a gong show! I look foward to getting on the new platform with more product . What really burns me right now is that our payout/comp reflects us being paid as “bank brokers” in a bank program where we should be getting biz/referrals. But the program has been dismantled, and we are now on our own… Which would be fine with me if I was on the ML grid and getting paid for it. We are not expected to go on the ML grid until may 2010. So until then, we are stuck on our current grid which is consistant with a Bank Program- WTF. I have seen the ML grid and it is quite nice, and the best part- no hair cut on trails!

Direwolf you are 100% right.    I am having several of my high net worth clients write letters to Lewis and Benson complaining about the dismantling of PBI.   Not like it will do any good but at least it is noise.   It is only a matter of time before these mofo’s get canned. It would be great if they just sold off ML.   Can you imagine how many lawsuits we will have when FA’s convince people to come out of CD’s and into investments and if they loose money.   I am looking forward to this new model getting crushed.     If we are subject to all the compliance now why wouldn’t ML be in the future. "switch letters, 100k trade approval, email rejections, annuity disclosure.   Its so funny to watch these execs try and put a spin on this. They r just happy to have jobs they really could care less.

i heard that bai just announced brokers are being pulled out of the branches completely and are being moved to the complexes.  also heard that the complex managers now have control over who gets referrals.  is this true?  if so that is way too much power for a complex manger to play favorites with a select few brokers.  i see this new system blowing up in everyones face.