Anybody have thoughts on the PWM industry? I have an informal meeting with a MD on Friday and I’d like to get some insight from people who have experience in the industry… Thanks… Career prospects/Mobility? Work Life Balance? Benefits/Compensation?
go for it if you find any private wealth left anywhere.
All of you questions depend a great deal on if you are taking a position at a wire-house or IC/PM firm?
have buddies in it, starting pretty much. first couple of yrs will suck as you build a book. it depends on what shop you go to and how they bring in rookies - if you work with a team thaty has a large book, you could be working on referrals that that current book is throwing off. also, clearly the mkt sucks hard now, but the long term demographics suggest PWM is a good business to be in over the next 2 decades. It scales nicely, pays well, and once you have a book, you can have a pretty good work life bal, from whatta I hear
My 2 cents from the prespective of the CDN bank owned wire-house: First few years are very hard but the hours are managable at 60-70 per week as you build your book. The longer you work at full tilt the bigger your inital base will be and this will pay off exponentially in he future. Compensation is what you make of it in a lot of cases and depends on your AUM- once you have made it and built a good book of fee based assets annual comp of 1-2mm + is very doable and i know IA’s that net back in the 4-6mm range from a fee based practice. The work life balance is pretty good overall and you do have the option to “step off the mill” and make very good cash ( try doing that as a IB MD or analyst). Overall the deal is very good if you can handle the idea of calling people you do not know and can get the right support from your firm; make them spell out specifically what they will do for you!
I used to work at a PWM shop, part of the high net worth space for a big bank… Anyway, work/life balance is about as good as it gets, 8:30-4:30, something like that. Very limited travel, pretty cake. Benefits were average. Comp was salary plus a bonus(based on variety of crap, some performance, some other metrics on inflows, etc.), mobility and prospects depend a lot on what you will be doing, I moved from there to a family office setting, others I know went on as investment strategists or pm’s at other similar places.
Daj, tvPM - Thanks for the info very informative… CCM - the person I know works for one of the major global banks any insights to how to express interest in the field with out explicitly asking for a job?