Raymond James has started a Veteran Financial Advisors Network as part of its Advisor Inclusion Networks.
VFAN was previewed at the company's recent Summer Development Conference in Orlando, Florida, and will officially launch this fall, in conjunction with Veterans Day, Tash Elwyn, CEO and president of Raymond James & Associates, told ThinkAdvisor in a phone interview on Friday.
The new network's "primary goal is to continue to enhance the professional development and support of veterans that are already a part of our Raymond James family," he explained.
"Beyond that, a secondary objective is to attract other military veterans to join Raymond James, whether it's as home office associates in a variety of different roles and capacities or to attract them to Raymond James, either as experienced financial advisors that are attracted to the values of our firm or as new entrants into the profession," he said.
It is "very intentional that the focus first, as always at Raymond James, is on how do we continue to support and add value and retain those that are already a part of the Raymond James family," he explained. That is because "I really believe that the most important foundation for growth is the retention of those that are already a part of the Raymond James family," he said.
This isn't the first Raymond James network for veterans. The company has already "celebrated and honored the service and the sacrifices" of military veterans, as well as their families, "largely through" the Raymond James National Veterans Inclusion Network (also known as Valor) at the firm's home office in Florida, offices in Tennessee and Michigan and its technology center in Colorado, Elwyn noted.
Valor has been a way for the firm to "demonstrate for many years now our commitment to providing opportunities for veterans within our firm to gather together, to honor their service to support them through additional professional development opportunities [and a way] to organize a lot of our philanthropic and volunteer efforts on behalf of the firm and our associates in support of veterans-focused philanthropies throughout the country," he told ThinkAdvisor.
VFAN was designed to "complement" those initiatives by helping to "provide additional support and professional development opportunities to veterans as well as military veterans who are transitioning from having served the country into their professional careers," he added.
Top Advisor Concerns
There are, meanwhile, three top concerns for Raymond James advisors across the board now, Elwyn also said.
