"They want to generate secure income for the rest of their lives while making sure they don't outlive their money," she says.
Serving this kind of clientele wasn't always easy at Merrill Lynch, Wilson says. One problem was the company's policy of not paying advisors for a client account of less than $100,000-which Wilson would sometimes get if her regular clients referred a friend or relative.
The push to sell proprietary products also conflicted with her vision for her business, as did the push to sell banking products, such as Visa cards and mortgages, after Bank of America bought Merrill, she says.
After many of Merrill Lynch's top people had been forced out following the acquisition, Wilson realized that she no longer worked for the same company she joined a dozen years earlier. "We were not doing the things I thought should have been done for the clients," she says. "My trust was broken."
The most frightening part of leaving, Wilson says, was that she did not know how many clients would follow her. As it turned out, even with having to work under the constraints of a noncompete, nonsolicit agreement, most of her Merrill Lynch clients made the switch, she says. "When your clients go with you to an independent, they are coming to you because of their faith and trust and confidence in you," she says.
For DeMoss and his two partners, Charles Flinton and Lyle Turner Jr., it was in 2005 when they began seriously considering the possibility of becoming independent RIAs.
Driving their thinking was their desire to own their own business and make fee-based financial planning the core of their service model-something they felt was impractical within Merrill Lynch. "It had to do with the different types of ways we could impact individuals and their entire financial picture versus just their investments," Flinton says.
Many of the team's clients were small business owners, and they were getting questions about things such as the implementation of health benefits, payroll and lease negotiations. But the team faced obstacles in providing such service, even on a basic level, DeMoss says. For example, simply making an appointment with a client was complicated by the lack of a robust client relationship management system in Merrill Lynch branch offices, he says.
The team could have footed the bill for CRM software on its own, but because of compliance issues, it would have forced its staff to have a second computer on their desk just for the new software.
Turner, a 50-year brokerage veteran who formed the team seven years earlier, ended up being the lynchpin for the move. "I wanted to see it sort of be my legacy and grow and prosper and continue," he says.