There's only one problem: Everybody else wants to get into the advisory profession. Boston-based consultant Dalbar predicts that the number of registered investment advisors, at both large and small firms, will surge to 185,000 by 2012. 

  Major financial services companies have gotten religion about the financial advisory business in a big way. In their world, comprehensive financial planning, once scorned, suddenly is a movement almost as hot as the Internet itself. 

  The future of the financial advisory business was the subject of a small symposium convened in Dallas on June 19 by Undiscovered Managers CEO Mark Hurley, author of a 1999 report that predicted sweeping changes in the delivery of financial services and left many advisors deeply troubled. Since then, much of what The Hurley Report predicted has happened. 

  Over the last 12 months, the number of new competitors, many of them possessing electronic components, for financial advisors has increased faster than even Hurley anticipated. A not-so-short list that Hurley outlined at the June symposium includes: 

  · Merrill Lynch's Unlimited Advantage Program, a flat-fee program linking online trading with financial advice, has raised an estimated $100 billion in one year.

  · Not to be outdone, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter unveiled its i-source program.  

  · Old-line trust company Northern Trust launched an aggressive expansion into 15 new affluent regional markets and, with a growth-oriented approach to investment management, has emerged as a serious competitor.

  ·  JP Morgan has debuted an online wealth management service aimed at what it calls ''semi-affluent'' investors with at least $1 million in assets. 

  ·  Attacking both the high and low ends of the market, Charles Schwab & Co. purchased U.S. Trust, whose average client has about $6 million, and introduced a Portfolio Consultations program for ordinary folks. 

  ·  Flush with a $90 million investment from Japan's Softbank, Chicago-based Morningstar is launching an individual investor-oriented web site, Clear Future, to compete against Bill Sharpe's Financial Engines and Morningstar.advisor.com to service investment advisors, among other ventures. 

  ·  Many big investment firms ranging from PaineWebber to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. are offering accountants fees of 10 to 25 basis points (sometimes in perpetuity) to refer business to them. 

  With everyone targeting the affluent or semi-affluent, French-owned AXA entered the financial advisory business with services aimed at the emerging affluent. American Express Financial Advisors is seeking to capitalize on the industry's hottest trend, lifestyle planning, by marshalling the resources of its parent company in areas like travel services and by offering special inducements for advisors' clients. 

  The stampede of financial services giants into the advisory business virtually guarantees a high failure rate. But it's unlikely to stop soon. Even if Dalbar's prediction of 185,000 advisors by 2012 comes up short, the supply of financial advisors is likely to start catching up with the demand for their services. ''I think most of the big companies will fail and end up trying to buy small firms,'' Hurley says. ''This is a business that is pure execution. Morgan has been surprised at how difficult this business is. But give them time and billions, and they'll figure it out.'' 

  Even if they don't, the big firms have the wherewithal to make business life miserable for independent advisors. That's why Hurley thinks some financial advisors who receive attractive offers to sell their firms should take them seriously. At the symposium, he alluded to the experience of HMO operators and physicians. ''The HMO business may be in chaos today, but the folks who started the first HMOs and sold them are billionaires today,'' he told attendees. ''Advisors make the same comments today that family-practice doctors made 15 years ago. Family-practice doctors are still in business today, but they are making $60,000 a year.'' 

  Not all of Hurley's analogies are likely to hold, and family-practice physicians probably are doing a little better than his figures. Moreover, independent financial advisors wouldn't have captured as much market share in the '90s from much better capitalized companies if they weren't doing something right. In recent years, client turnover at the average independent firm has averaged between 3% and 5%, compared to 15% to 20% at larger firms. Indeed, many advisors rarely lost any clients unless they died or moved, until 1998, when the tech-stock explosion prompted some clients to question advisors' investment acumen. Hurley himself believes that there always will be hundreds, if not thousands, of very successful, profitable firms in the future. 

  For all their past David vs. Goliath success, advisors have sound reasons to be troubled about the future. ''The biggest threat to your firms isn't losing clients. It's losing key personnel,'' Hurley warned. 

  Marketing is perhaps the biggest challenge financial giants pose to independent advisors. ''My marketing plan is to look at my phone and wait for it to ring,'' joked one successful independent advisor. Many independent firms are considering hiring dedicated marketers (once seen as almost sacrilegious) for the first time. 

  Even several younger tech-savvy advisors at the Dallas symposium rolled their eyeballs after listening to technology executives from Charles Schwab & Co. to TD Waterhouse discuss the implications of new wireless technologies and 24-hour, 7-day-a-week services. 

  Judy Shine of Shine Investment Advisor Services in Englewood, Colo., asked, ''What I'm hearing is that if I'm not available to answer clients' questions at 3 a.m. on some wireless service, I'll lose them, and my response is: 'Good.' '' 

  Chris Cordaro of Bugen Stuart Korn & Cordaro in Chatham, N.J., commented, ''Technology is a paradox. You hear that clients will demand access, but they also need a technical person from American Express to hook up their access. Most clients are not that tech-savvy; they use the Internet but have a lot of trouble downloading certain types of information.'' 

  On the flip side, technology will also permit many small firms to jump down the curve and automate many of the back-office functions without mainframe systems. Hurley predicted that 85% of these functions soon will be automated. ''Look at all the technological change we've seen in the last three years that no one anticipated,'' observed one advisor. 

  Significantly, at the symposium's breakout sessions, few advisors voiced concerns about the competitive implications of fast-changing technologies. But advisors in affluent regions already are witnessing the changing dynamics in the market. One of the strongest competitors for now has turned out to be Northern Trust, which has hired marketers for $200,000 to $300,000 a year to bring in $50 million to $100 million. ''They have lots of marble and dark wood,'' one advisor quipped. 

  But the world and client profiles are changing as fast as the competitive playing field and in ways that will conspire to confound veteran advisors and new entrants. Speaking at the Undiscovered Managers' symposium, Marjorie Bauer, senior vice president of Fidelity Investments, noted that 46% of the U.S. affluent are business owners, according to a 1998 Yankelovich Monitor report. Most of them are small business people and, by nature, are control freaks with a high degree of self-confidence. Only 36% of the affluent believe they must sometimes compromise their principles, compared to 50% of the nation at large. 

  This group is a bundle of contradictions. Fully 70% of them want more control over their lives, but 85% want less stress. As Bauer explained, their attitude towards money differs from mainstream Americans in several ways. For example, 76% think that having enough money is very important to happiness, compared to 69% of the U.S. population at large. However, when asked if money is the only true measure of success, only 8% of the affluent responded affirmatively, compared to 22% of the broader population. 

  Affluent Americans also view their money as a means to an end, for both themselves and their communities. According to the Yankelovich survey, only 28% of all U.S. citizens contributed time to their communities in the past year, but 68% of the affluent did. The typical client of a financial advisor faces far more choices than most Americans. What differentiates many affluent individuals from the rest of society is their ability to make smart choices from alternatives produced by others. 

  The good news for advisors is that clients and prospects face too many choices. As Bauer explained, affluent clients may want to be in control but they are waking up to the realization they can't control everything. One of the many paradoxes of technology is the way in which online trading - an initially liberating experience for many investors- frequently turns into enslavement and frustration. 

  What clients really want, Bauer explained, is a partnership. That's a redefinition of the advisor's traditional role as know-all, see-all sources of ultimate wisdom. 

  But change is accelerating. And while advisors are preparing for marginal change, they are likely to experience geometric change.