About 75% of Merrill’s roughly 2,400 trainees are on track to complete the revived program, the firm’s first public estimate since restarting advisor training in 2021.
Merrill said the higher expected success rate comes from giving trainees earlier access to products, placing them on teams with veteran advisors and adding a new entry-level role now held by about 25 people.
Graduates are expected to manage $64 million in client assets on average, and recruiter Louis Diamond said Merrill’s Bank of America referral pipeline gives novice advisors an edge in building books of business.
The training push sits alongside selective recruiting, which executives said is not a core growth pillar even after recent hires, including a four-person Morgan Stanley team managing $1.5 billion.
The broader wealth business still showed mixed momentum: second-quarter net new assets fell 4% to $13.7 billion, while client balances rose 12% to $4.9 trillion and revenue climbed 16% to a record $6.9 billion.