Advisors ranked their responses on a scale of 1-5, with 1 representing the least amount of time and 5 representing the most. Responses for each activity were then averaged for the purposes of presentation. In relative order, client service, client meetings, portfolio management, client acquisition, and research were the top five most time-consuming activities for advisors, with each scoring in the 3-4 range across all three channels. W/R advisors report spending more time on client service, client meetings, portfolio management and client acquisition than the other two channels, while advisors from all three channels spend almost the same amount of time on research. Most of the other activity responses are consistent across the three channels with the exception of three: office administration, back-office operations and human resources. For these activities, W/R advisors report spending much less time than their IBD and RIA peers. As noted in analysis of responses to other practice management questions, these collective findings likely reflect that the wirehouse/regional firms, on average, have a greater number of corporate level resources in place to handle business activities such as these, which allows them to focus less on administration and more on client-related activities. Online marketing, while showing growth over time, still ranks near the bottom of the list with responses averaging approximately 1.75. Overall, advisors across all three channels appear to have a keen focus on the core areas of their business while they endeavor to spend their limited resources on secondary activities such as trading and administrative activities.
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