Leaders in the financial services industry are grappling with remote work policies and seeking ways to allow their workers to continue to enjoy greater work-life balance without jeopardizing a healthy and connected corporate culture.
While the industry's "normal" challenges, such as helping clients solve increasingly complex financial problems and ensuring firms are embracing emerging technologies, are hard in their own right, the workforce management issue is perhaps even more challenging, experts agree, because there is no playbook when it comes to the new normal of hybrid work.
Resolving the remote work question is among the most important strategic priorities for firms in this space, MyVest CEO Anton Honikman recently told ThinkAdvisor. Honikman disagrees with putting too much focus on setting a specific number of days in the office.
From the biggest wirehouses to the smallest niche advisory shops, policies are being developed and tested in real time, and it's possible those with the right approach will glean a competitive edge over their peers. Those who fail to evolve with the times, Honikman and others warn, may find it harder to source and keep top talent.
A New World of Work
As the CEO of MyVest, a TIAA subsidiary focused on building and supporting enterprise wealth management technology, Honikman spends much of his time thinking about the technical side of the investment management industry.
The firm rolled out a big new software release in June that brought key enhancements for advisor workflows and client onboarding processes, and it's already at work developing its next release, focused in part on new proposal generation capabilities.
Alongside that focus, however, is the need to manage the human side of MyVest, Honikman says, and this is no easy task in the summer of 2023. Simply put, the world of work in many professional industries was completely remade by the COVID-19 pandemic, and though the emergency situation has mostly abated, the old office life has not fully returned.
This reality is affecting different industries in different ways, but given the nature of advisory work and the success of the industry during the remote-first pandemic era, fundamental questions are being raised about the role of office space moving forward.
"I think a lot of my fellow executives in the financial services space will understand the challenge I'm talking about," Honikman says. "Summer is here, and the job market remains really tight, and so we are all just trying to figure out how, in this new virtual world, we can best keep productivity up and ensure we are staying connected."
Remote Work Policies: UBS vs. Morgan Stanley
The remote-working policies in place across the U.S. financial services industry remain a mixed bag nearly four years after the emergence of the pandemic, with some firms allowing essentially full-time remote work for many positions and others requiring an "old school" approach of five days per week in the office. Many others stand in the middle.
UBS, for example, has announced a new virtual worker framework that will allow at least some roles at the firm to be 100% remote for the foreseeable future, though many advisors and broker-dealer representatives will likely continue to work on a hybrid basis.
Public statements made by the leadership of UBS suggest the new approach to flexible working was designed to appeal to a diverse talent pool and increase retention, while enhancing client service. Currently, UBS is conducting a phased implementation of the framework to "select current and prospective employees across the country."
The wirehouse's strategy, at least as described by UBS executives, appears far more flexible than that of its rival Morgan Stanley. In stark contrast, on July 1, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management started limiting most of its sales force to 90 days of remote work each year.
