Servicing the wealthy used to be a little-commented-on market segment. Now magazines are being founded that take aim at the subject, including the recent debut of Financial Advisor's own Private Wealth magazine, where Prince serves as editor. Wall Street's methodologies, Bowen believes, will evolve with the times, and thus he anticipates a good deal of growth via the Street. With pressures from both independents and direct marketers, Wall Street is being squeezed in two directions.
Change, however, is always difficult. It is more so when companies are as massive and powerful as are Wall Street brokers. The institutional inertia is considerable, and Wall Street's services have always revolved around product. Even research at how to give service to clients better-from the rep's point of view-has included proposals from product-wholesaling (third-party) staff, not from research generated by independent entities that have gone directly to the rep.
"It's just not how Wall Street operated," Bowen explains. "And that's why they are open to our services and want to listen to us. If we become a change agent, it is not because we have a new theory or better formula, but because we have gone to financial advisors and asked in a rational way how they created their success-then synthesized that information into a program that anyone can understand, and that certain successful advisors can implement and benefit from."
Mark Fadiman is the founding former editor of On Wall Street magazine and the founder of Palisade Business Press.