Typically, advisors who move keep 80-90 percent of their clients. Client surveys find that those who move with advisors usually do so because they value personal relationships they develop with brokers and do not want to be assigned to someone new.
Publicly, bank executives play down broker departures, but they have been taking steps to blunt their impact wealth management, which has been playing a growing role in generating banks' profits.
For example, wealth management accounted for 49 percent of Morgan's net revenue in 2014, up from about 40 percent in 2010, the year after it expanded the business by buying Smith Barney.
As Reuters reported in February, Bank of America has been making it harder for brokers to take clients with them when they leave, modifying an industry-wide agreement on what client information advisors can take with them.
Mindful how much is at stake, brokers are taking no chances. The Botkins kept a sign outside of their new office that said "fabulous building for sale" as a decoy until after they moved in. (Reporting By Elizabeth Dilts; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Tomasz Janowski)