New service connects advisers with buyers, hires

A new web-based business is using a romantic analogy to address the challenge of finding potential successors for advisers planning for their own retirement.

Succession Registry, launched in January, bills itself as an online matchmaking service for advisers and prospective buyers, partners or employees. The business is based in Mansfield, Mass.

“It’s like eHarmony,” said co-founder and president Kristofer Behn, a certified financial planner whose practice, Fieldstone Financial Management Group, also is based in Mansfield.

“We believe this will revolutionize how practitioners and key employees find potential successors,” he said.

Participants fill out profile forms, setting the criteria they seek in a potential employee, partner or employer. When there is an appropriate match of criteria, prospective candidates receive an automatic e-mail alerting them of available opportunities. Those seeking to hire or to sell all or part of their practice do not receive e-mails when matches occur.

“The site is totally anonymous. We don’t want any part of screening of candidates,” said Mr. Behn.

In a switch from convention, employers do not pay to post job and succession opportunities, while job, practice or partnership seekers pay $9.95 per month.

Succession Registry already has 75 candidate and 130 employer users. There are more than 100 employer postings, with 20% offering succession opportunities.

“It would be a welcome service,” said Herb White, a certified financial planner and managing director of Life Certain Wealth Strategies LLC in Greenwood Village, Colo. “One of the hardest things in this industry is finding qualified people you can groom for succession.” Mr. White oversees $38 million in assets under management.

“There has been no viable matchmaking mechanism,” he said. He said he has connected with potential employees and partners purely by happenstance — by sharing a table at a meeting, or through a casual conversation with a wholesaler who knew of a candidate, for example.

BrokerHunter.com, founded in 1999, is an online service that focuses on matching job seekers and opportunities in the financial field. “We’re the Monster.com of the financial services industry,” said Steve Testerman, founder and chief executive, and a former broker.

Like Succession Registry, BrokerHunter, based in Cumming, Ga., is also built on a database model. Users fill out detailed questionnaires, and candidates receive automatic e-mails notifying them of matches.

While candidates may be potential key employees, there is no category where they can represent their interest in becoming equity partners.

The fee is paid by the employer, according to the number of days an advertisement is run, and the number of geographic markets targeted. Job seekers are not charged.

There are more than 62,000 candidates actively enrolled, and more than 3,400 employer users, with about 2,200 job postings, according to Mr. Testerman.

“Ninety percent of the jobs are adviser jobs in the securities or insurance industries,” he said.

There’s also FP Transitions, a web-based service of Business Transitions LLC of Portland, Ore., that serves as a matchmaker between prospective buyers and sellers of financial planning practices.

On the nonprofit side, the Financial Planning Association also runs an online job board, called the FPA Career Center. As with most online recruiting sites, employers pay a fee and job seekers do not. The service is open to both FPA members and nonmembers.

Unlike the for-profit sites, the FPA’s is not database driven, but based instead on key-word searches of submitted resumes and job listings.

Although there is no special category for those interested in equity or partnerships, the detailed job descriptions may suggest an employer’s hope to foster a candidate’s career with the firm.

“In 2007, the FPA Career Center had over 300 active employers posting over 600 jobs. Over 1,000 resumes were posted in 2007” and there were over 1,100 job applications, said Heather Almand, director of public relations and communications for the Denver-based Financial Planning Association.

Bob Mauterstock, a certified financial planner in Farmington, Conn., used the FPA Career Center to recruit a candidate from Kansas. Mr. Mauterstock, whose firm, KR Wealth Management, oversees $200 million in assets, concedes that there are limitations to national recruiting sites.

“You can use questionnaires to create a match, but you still have to meet that person. And it has to be a pretty high-level [candidate] to expend the money to bring someone cross-country,” Mr. Mauterstock said.

Mr. White suggested that a succession-focused matchmaking service “is a great opportunity,” and can help prevent “orphan accounts” — clients of a retiring adviser who get randomly assigned to other advisers when the practice closes down.