Morgan Stanley Rolls Out New Mobile Banking Program

To avoid a monthly account fee, clients must have an eligible Morgan Stanley investment account and one Morgan Stanley Online enrollment; for a Premier CashPlus account, there must be $2,500 in monthly deposits or a $25,000 average daily balance. For Platinum CashPlus, the requirement is a monthly deposit level of $5,000 and an average daily balance of $25,000.

Recent Results

Morgan Stanley's wealth unit ended 2019 with 15,468 financial advisors vs. 15,694 a year earlier. They had average annual fees and commissions of $1.182 million (up 12% from Q4'18) and average assets per advisor of $175 million.

It reported total revenues of $17.74 billion, up 3% from a year ago, and an 11% year-over-year gain in Q4'19 sales of $4.58 billion. Full-year profits before taxes for 2019 were up 7% from 2018 to $4.83 billion; they were $1.16 billion in Q4'19, a jump of 15% from Q4'18.

Client assets were $2.7 trillion as of Dec. 31, up 17% from Q4'18, and fee-based assets were $1.3 trillion, up 21% from Q4'18; net fee-based flows were $24.9 billion in the latest quarter, and client loan balances stood at $90 billion.

The wirehouse is aiming to add some 1 million mass affluent clients by 2027 by tapping into the 2.7 million workplace equity plan participants it now has access to via its 2019 acquisition of Solium Capital, which now does business as Shareworks. It currently works with some 5,000 users of Shareworks.

— Check out Top Women in WealthTech 2020: Rachel Wilson of Morgan Stanley on ThinkAdvisor.