Ameriprise Financial has added $165 million advisor, Charles A. Smith, from LPL Financial-a significant bolster to the Ameriprise advisory service which presently averages $483,000 annually.Smith joins Ameriprise after working for LPL for 7 years, and building toward his $165 million in assets. Before LPL, the Gilbert, AZ, based advisor worked for Trusted Securities Advisor Corp./MONY Securities Corp. and First Global Capital Corp. All total, he has worked over 15 years in the industry.Ameriprise CEO, Jim Cracchiolo, is excited about the immediate future of the firm. He has reported an uptick in advisor activity, as the firm now employs 9,696 employees. This marks an increase of 4 from Q2-2014, but still remains significantly lower than where they sat a year ago at close to 10,060. 2,100 of these employees currently function as advisors.According to Cracchiolo, "Overall, our advisor force is strong, and our retention as well as satisfaction rates remain very high. In terms of recruiting experienced advisors, we brought in another 81 in the quarter. The productivity of the advisors we're attracting continues to grow, and our recruiting pipeline so far in the fourth quarter looks quite good."The plan to close out the year positively is reliant on solid advertising and marketing campaigns, as well as honing the skills of the advisor force to take advantage of new and existing technologies, as well as ever growing realm of social media.Article Source | Janet Levaux
