Recruiting at Raymond James Financial Services and Raymond James & Associates hit near-records in fiscal year 2017.
Scott Curtis, head of Raymond James Financial Services, told ThinkAdvisor that this was the "second best recruiting year we've ever had" for the independent channel.
"The prior year was the best, but we exceeded our expectations this past year," Curtis said.
According to Curtis, interest remains strong.
"We're going into this fiscal year '18, which we're now in, and we're well ahead of where we were at the same time a year ago," he said during a press briefing at the Raymond James Women's Symposium.
Meanwhile, Tash Elwyn, head of Raymond James & Associates, says the employee channel has had a "very, very strong recruiting year."
"I would describe it as a near-record year, but not quite a record year," he told ThinkAdvisor. "But, again, a very strong year."
Elwyn said RJA continues to see "a lot of interest and success" in the West Coast and Northeast in particular.
"While we're very much bottom-up, opportunistic in trying to identify advisors throughout the country that share our values and we believe are a great cultural fit for [RJA], we do have a top-down strategic focus on the West Coast and the Northeast as historically underpenetrated markets for RJA," Elwyn explained during the press briefing.
Raymond James measures growth by historical gross revenues rather than numbers of people — although it doesn't release the gross revenue numbers.
Elwyn and Curtis both discussed some of the recruiting challenges they faced in the past year.
According to Elwyn, "there's been more noise this year than any other year, at least in my 10-plus years I've been in various management capacities."
