J.P. Morgan Securities goes on recruiting offensive

J.P. Morgan Securities is stepping up its game and hoping that top financial advisers will take notice.

The firm, which operates as the retail brokerage arm, has made a number of notable moves in recent months to make sure that its name is more prominent in the eyes of top advisers. After bringing on nearly $1.2 billion in assets from veteran advisers, it signed the Protocol for Broker Recruiting last month and has been enlisting most top-name recruiters to help spread the word.

"They are reaching out to recruiters and trying to be competitive with deals and different things, and they want to see a lot of [prospects],” said Rich Schwarzkopf, whose eponymous recruiting firm was hired two months ago by J.P. Morgan Securities. “They said they would be accommodating, so they're doing all the right things and saying all the right things.”

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The firm has about 450 advisers, many of whom came to the firm after JPMorgan purchased the distressed The Bear Stearns Co. Inc. in 2008 during the financial crisis.

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Although the bank itself is well-known, the boutique private-banking arm hasn't been on as many advisers' radar because it joined J.P. Morgan relatively recently, according to Rick Rummage, a career consultant with The Rummage Group.

“I think they were just trying to maintain after the great recession,” he said. “Now they're making sure their deals are competitive and making sure their platform is competitive along with their product offerings because at the end of the day, people have to know they're in the market, and most advisers didn't.”

Recruiters expect that joining the protocol, which provides a level of legal protection to brokers who take certain client information when they change firms, is an important step in making the firm more attractive.

Mr. Rummage said that he had one adviser who decided not to go to J.P. Morgan Securities because he had a competitive offer from a firm that had signed on to the protocol.

“If you have protocol firms you can go to, and still get a nice upfront check and be in a better situation, why take the risk of having to deal with any legal disputes?” he asked.

Firms that have signed on to the protocol — there are about 1,100 — can still sue advisers for taking client information if they move to a non-protocol firm.

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