Cetera Financial Group CEO Adam Antoniades.
There were several steps that Cetera Financial Group took at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to help its advisors navigate the many challenges that arose, according to Adam Antoniades, the firm's CEO.
"I'm not sure that my timing" in being promoted to CEO from president in late 2019 was "particularly good given everything we've been dealing with" since then, he joked on Wednesday, during the online Fearless Week conference session "Leadership Through Crisis: An Interview with Cetera's Adam Antoniades."
However, "suffice it to say, it's a little bit of a blip for us given some of the history that we've experienced at Cetera and some of the challenges that have really resulted in the company being very resilient through these types of environments," he noted.
Clearly the pandemic and its economic impact have created challenges specific to the financial sector. But "the biggest impact of the pandemic, beyond sort of the work-from-home experience and the disruption to the normal course of business, has really been the effect of interest rates on organizations like ours," according to Antoniades.
After all, "we have a significant revenue stream that's derived from that, and it really compromised a significant portion of every firm out there" in terms of their profitability, he said.
What was important was to find a way to react "in a way that ensures that you're not abandoning your core principles of supporting your advisors and our clients, of course, at a time when they need you the most," he said.
Cetera wanted to make sure its advisors did not stop talking to their clients, something that happens "all too often" during a crisis, he noted.
He pointed to three key ways in which Cetera helped its advisors after the pandemic started:
