Younger leaders are able to think about the firm’s future with a longer time horizon, says Sadler. “When you’re in your late 30s and early 40s, you’re able to look at things with a time horizon beyond that of some of our partners who are more tenured,” he explains. “It’s harder to make longer term decisions when you’re in a later stage in your career versus partners who want Moneta to be something beyond their team and where it is today.”
Yet Moneta also emphasizes experience among its partners and its c-suite—the firm’s board, partners and executives have an average tenure of 16 years, and only 16% of them identify as millennials. Moneta has at any given time a group of young advisors rising through the ranks to more senior positions, and another group of senior advisors preparing to reach partner status. Education at Moneta is continuous—as are the succession concerns. To offer advisors a career path and access to resources, Moneta developed a dedicated training and development system within its enterprise and client service teams called Moneta University. (See the sidebar.)
Succession
“Succession planning here is not a one-to-one handoff,” says McGinnis. “We want to build businesses that continue to grow so our clients are served and we can continue to serve more clients.”
With a focus on hiring young and developing competencies over time, Moneta’s teams have several options for developing their own succession plans. McGinnis started his tenure as an advisor on a team led by Peter Schick and Don Kukla. Schick, around age 60 at the time, was preparing to leave the business. McGinnis and other younger advisors on the team were brought into Schick’s client relationships to prepare for the transition.
“When it was time, it was something we had built over a period of years,” says McGinnis. “The client didn’t experience any sort of shock or abutment. It was a natural progression that they knew was coming.”
Today, almost all of Moneta’s clients have at least two advisors involved in their client relationships. McGinnis now has younger advisors on his team that he is mentoring and preparing for more senior roles—at age 37, he is considering his own succession plan.
“We’ve thought about how we continue the sustainability of our team,” says McGinnis. “We’re hiring a fifth advisor on our team. We also have client service managers with aspirations to continue to grow in their careers. We’re looking for people who want to take the same paths that we took.”
Sadler, now 51, found himself merging with another team to become part of the succession plan for another Moneta partner, Nancy Georgen. Since then, he has begun developing his own successors, including one, Kara Harmon, who has risen to the level of partner.