The world may be closing out Pride Month -- celebrating the culture, achievements and activism of the LGBTQ+ community -- but for Merrill Lynch advisor Christopher Jay, who has built his Seattle-based firm to $3.5 billion in assets under management, the goal of diversity and inclusion continues.
The advisor, who started as an intern at Merrill Lynch 14 years ago, told Financial Advisor magazine he is striving to make a lasting impact on culture—at Merrill, in the advisory industry and at his own firm.
As the first Black, gay and youngest Chair of Merrill's Financial Advisor Advisory Council to Management in its 50-year history, Jay realizes that he symbolizes many of the changes the industry is experiencing. “I think representation matters and we know this, whether it’s gender, sexuality, ethnicity, seeing someone in a role where they’re the first to look like you, sound like you or spell their name like you, matters.”
Jay said he views the role as chair of the advisory council as a catalyst to creating a more inclusive and equitable industry both for advisors and clients.
He combines his mindfulness with a laser business-focus and has been instrumental, along with other members of the council, in shepherding through a new dashboard that allows advisors and teams across Merrill to benchmark themselves to others in the firm.
“We’ve always had some version of this, but what I like about this version, which is part of what we call Modern Merrill, is that it goes beyond production. We started working on this my first year. The idea we had is that there is more to being successful than just being a big producer,” Jay said.
This was not the outcome or intent, but it is a benefit that for the first time advisors who are women and or Black, who wouldn’t have been recognized in the past, but are delivering full solution sets to clients and ranking high as a result, Jay added.
First the first time, Merrill has added advisor qualities to the dashboard comparison such as whether or not advisors are choosing to be fiduciaries, how they’re growing their businesses and how much wealth and estate planning they do. As a result, the top-quintile producers aren’t always ranking as high as they once did, Jay noted.
The new Merrill dashboard, “emphasizes the right things from a culture and business standpoint. This allows good advisors to get the visibility, notoriety and access they deserve. If you want to skate where the puck is going, it is critical to make sure your practice is diverse,” he explained.
Jay said it also important to highlight Merrill’s National Black Advisor Symposium, which welcomed more than 350 advisors to Charlotte, NC, for the three-day event this year and has been growing consistently year-over-year since it was launched in 1995.
“It’s a really cool opportunity for black advisors to come together and invite senior leaders and connect with them. Attendees say ‘Wow, this is the only event in the firm that feels like family. I certainly feel the same way. It allows me to make and engage with some of my closest friends in the firm,” Jay said.
His goals for the next 10 years are many but one of them is to create an LGQBT+ symposium. “I bet that happens inside of 10 years and I want to be a key driver of making it happen,” he added.
Jay says if he’s out and open and attending events with his partner – “as I always do” – it inspires others to consider a career in wealth management both at his firm and at Merrill overall.
“I received a call this past weekend from a colleague who had just hired a new team member who is young and gay and an immigrant to the US, who said news about me inspired him to join the firm. I am very touched and blown away,” Jay said. “One more person can be themselves.”
Jay brings a similar level of enthusiasm to his own firm, which manages $3.5 billion in assets for 350 families in 48 states.
“Our practice is extremely diverse in terms of age, gender, sexuality and race. We have a lot of same-sex families that we work with, a lot of Black families, widows and widowers and multigenerational families,” the advisor said.
“We aren’t focused on any one demographic, but we find that the introductions that we get are to members of the Black and LGQBT+ community and younger folks,” Jay added.
While the firm’s minimum for working with a client is $5 million in assets, “we have been very thoughtful in building a three-tier model that allows the firm to deliver value-based advice and services” for what clients are paying.
“We look at each client through an assets-plus income lens,” Jay said. “ So, if there is a younger person just starting out and they’re below a hard-dollar minimum, we certainly don’t want to close the door on them. If they have some savings, but have cash flow that allows them to continue saving, it allows us to welcome Black and gay and younger clients who align with us and see the value of our offerings.”
The advisor also works to have a lot of youth and diversity on his 12-person team, which includes four advisors and eight administrative and wealth planning specialists. “We’re making sure I’m not the only gay or non-white person on the team,” he said.
Jay said it’s important to any firm working with LGQBT+ clients to have experts who are well versed in surrogacy and estate planning so that couples can effectively pass wealth to a same sex partner. Merrill also provides a deep bench of estate planning resources his firm draws on, Jay said.
“Even if you’re in a Venn diagram of a very small demographic, I’d really like to see in the next 10 years that there are more LGQBT+ clients and advisors at Merrill and in the industry. We’re getting there.
That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been naysayers, “but it’s important to keep your eyes on the prize,” Jay said.