Rising Star: Morgan Stanley’s Shelley O’Connor

What is the biggest issue confronting the wealth management field today, and how should the industry overall — or financial advisors overall — address it?

One of the big challenges facing the field is increasing the diversity of our advisor and branch management ranks and attracting and training the next generation of advisors and field leaders. Our long term success will depend on our ability to look like the clients and communities we serve.

Women and millennials are two growing client segments we want to be well positioned to serve. Today women control investment decisions for almost 40% of U.S. investable assets, and in the coming decades, almost $60 trillion in intergenerational wealth will flow from baby boomers to their successors. Both of these segments have shown a strong desire to align their investments with their values. Having a diverse advisor base with the skills, gender-smarts, and resources necessary to connect with these client segments will be critical.

Although women clients don't necessarily prefer women advisors, we still want to see more women advisors come into the business. Being an advisor can be a great career for women, especially the inherent flexibility and entrepreneurial aspects of the job. Our senior, successful female advisors play an important role in helping us recruit new women to the firm and in supporting the women already here through women's networking and business development groups.

What challenges face you and your career today, and how do you see yourself overcoming these hurdles?

There is no question that managing the wealth management business has become increasing complex since I started. Today's vast array of products and services, rapidly changing markets and technologies, and the need for strong oversight and client protections create a multitude of new opportunities. The challenge is maintaining the balance between what needs attention today and driving the vision for where we want to be in five or 10 years.

One of the best ways I've found to handle this is to build a strong team that embraces a culture of excellence, delegating responsibilities to them and allowing them to grow. We have an extraordinary culture at Morgan Stanley that goes back to the vision of our founders: doing only first-class business in a first-class way. By leveraging a team that is dedicated to putting clients first, doing the right thing and giving back, we can find that important balance between growing and safeguarding our business today and laying the foundation for our future.

What is the future of the wirehouse/full-service employee-advisor model? Why?

We remain absolutely committed to the full-service advisor model. We believe we can best serve clients through experienced and highly trained advisors who provide advice and solutions on both sides of the balance sheet. At the end of the day, what differentiates Morgan Stanley is the advice and intellectual capital we bring to our clients through our advisors. They will always remain at the center of our client relationships.

To complement our advisor-client relationships, we are making significant investments in digital capabilities. We want to have a very efficient and client-friendly model — one that allows clients to connect with us anytime, from anywhere, on their terms. As we engage with millennial clients in particular, and the generations that come after them, we know they will expect less paper and more digital connections from the day they open their first account with us, throughout their entire relationship with Morgan Stanley.

What else would you like to share about the industry and your role in it?

I have been given extraordinary opportunities throughout my career at Morgan Stanley to help build a world-class financial services firm. But in the end, it's all about our clients and the value we bring to these relationships. I have always believed that the wealth management business is a truly honorable profession. What we do can make such an important difference in our clients' lifestyles and legacies.

By the Numbers

Morgan Stanley's Wealth Management operations had total revenues of $15.1 billion in 2015, while the group's net income was $2.1 billion. Other notable results for the group are as follows:

• Client assets total close to $2 trillion as of Dec. 31, 2015 — 40% of which ($795 billion) are fee-based assets.

• The number of advisors stands at 15,899, which is up from 15,807 in September 2015 but down from 16,076 a year earlier.

• Financial-advisor productivity, which measures advisors' total yearly fees and commissions, was about $947,000 for 2015. It stood at $944,000 in 2014.

—Janet Levaux