SRP Americas 2025: standardisation triggers growth among advisors

Around 25% of financial advisors at Raymond James Global Wealth Solutions use structured investments, said Tom Layton (pictured), the firm’s senior vice president of product management, during the ‘Expanding horizons: growth and adoption of structured products and distribution network in wealth management’ panel session.

“It's been growing pretty dramatically the last three or four years,” Layton said on stage.

We made the decision to internalise some of our education and distribution efforts - Tom Layton, Raymond James

Standardisation of language is one of the approaches that could help scale the business.

“Give us a story that we could tell consistently. We made the decision to internalise some of our education and distribution efforts that helped us to further standardise that message and the consistency with which it was approached,” Layton said.

Michaelangelo Dooley, portfolio manager for NewEdge Structured Note Strategies at NewEdge Wealth echoed, pointing out the importance of simplifying the message in communicating in the separately managed accounts (SMAs) space, including a focus on understanding the product’s role in a portfolio.

_{Left to right: Eric Glicksman, IVM Markets; Tom Layton, Raymond James; Michaelangelo Dooley, NewEdge Wealth; Erwan Fesquet, MassMutual WM; and Grant Melquist, Ameriprise Financial.}

When engaging with advisors on structured investments, Erwan Fesquet, structured investments specialist at MassMutual Wealth Management, said the firm takes a top-down approach, from brainstorming from the portfolio construction’s perspective to breaking down the structured investment wrappers available to incorporate such as structured notes or annuity.

“All advisors start to move the 60/40 portfolio [and] 2022 is a good example of... the need for upstream investment solutions,” Fesquet said.

“A lot of advisors at MassMutual are financial planners before being wealth managers [...] We try to teach them about having a balanced practice,” he said. “When you think about financial planning, you should think about goal-based investing.”

Complexity versus simplicity

When asked about advisors’ approach promoting quantitative investment solutions (QIS) or complex products, Raymond James’ Layton acknowledged it is a “very time-consuming process” due to the complex nature involved in the products.

“[Financial advisors] are more likely to get a client complaint that is targeted at a non-traditional index than three single stocks,” he said. “As long as they're approaching that product correctly... then I'm okay with that.”

_{Left to right: Eric Glicksman, IVM Markets; Tom Layton, Raymond James; Michaelangelo Dooley, NewEdge Wealth; Erwan Fesquet, MassMutual WM; and Grant Melquist, Ameriprise Financial.}

Meanwhile, MassMutual’s Fesquet sees SMAs as the highest growth potential area.

“A lot of our guys are financial planners [...] They act more as asset allocators, so outsourcing the management of a portion of their structure portfolio is a big part of their business,” he said.

Grant Melquist, director for wealth management solutions, structured products at Ameriprise Financial, added: "To get into the components of the products, whether it's growth or income, if [advisors] recognise that within the financial plan, all the products have been available to them – that this can help them respect the fears and desires that their clients have, they accept about these products.” 

---

Do you have a confidential story, tip or comment you’d like to share? Contact Us | SRP (structuredretailproducts.com)