Like much of the financial services business, broker-dealers should curtail spending on recruiting older advisors and invest the funds in youth and future growth, Pershing Advisor Solutions CEO Mark Tibergien told B-D executives at the Financial Services Institute's 10th annual conference in Washington, D.C. today.

Though Tibergien didn't come right out and say it, his implication was that B-Ds who are spending millions to recruit brokers and advisors over 50 years old might as well be spending fortunes to trade deck chairs on a large boat in the Atlantic.

"Most B-D's are just trading old people," he said. He also suggested that their investments in succession planning might prove fruitless in many instances.

Brokerage firms also need to think of who is their client of the future. One out of every four top earners in America is under 40 years old. Only 22% of advisors are under 40, Tibergien added.

These folks may not have the assets yet, but it is changing faster than most brokerage executives and advisors realize. "This is a business built for and by boomers, but it isn't a business for boomer [clients anymore], it's for Gen X and Gen Y," he said.

In fact, there is almost as much money with the under 45 population as there is with the over 45 age group. Marketing to Generation X is going to be a very different undertaking. They will expect advisors "to prove that they are worthy," Tibergien noted. "We view hard work by hours. Millennials view it by output."

"Why are not more young people entering this business?" he asked. In the wake of the financial crisis, Wall Street has a bad name just as it did in the 1930s and 1940s. "Once the role of the stockbroker was respected. Now they are wolves."