By Beth Braverman

Most successful small-business owners know they're fortunate, given that many start-ups fail. That applies not only to restaurateurs and retailers but also to financial advisors building their own practice. "This is a tough industry," says John Roberts, chief field officer at Northwestern Mutual. "There's a lot of competition." Of the more than 3,000 new, full-time financial advisors his firm recruits to become business owners this year, about 20% will still be with Northwestern Mutual in 2030. But among advisors who make it past that five-year milestone, the annual retention rate jumps to more than 96%.

Roberts, 41, is responsible for the growth of Northwestern Mutual's field force of more than 21,000 financial advisors and team members nationwide. He also oversees Northwestern Mutual's $335 billion Wealth & Investment Management business. Roberts spoke with Barron's Advisor about how the company supports advisors in those early years, why selling insurance can help young advisors build their business, and the role experienced advisors play in mentoring and passing on knowledge to the next generation.

How do you help newer advisors build confidence and competence? Every year, we bring together our field force to offer more intensive training on specific topics of their choice on certain products and planning capabilities. We also make sure our next-gen advisors have an opportunity to learn from their more experienced counterparts.

For new advisors, we offer a combination of a national training program out of our corporate offices, with intensive multiweek programs. Every three years we offer follow-on weekly training. These trainings cover the science of how to offer the products, combine the products, and go to market as a financial planner. We also offer training on the art of building financial services clientele. It is led by our managing partner of network offices.

Tell us about the role experienced advisors play in developing younger ones. The real magic is when we can pass knowledge across generations. We've been fortunate to have a network of veteran advisors that is willing to give back and to lift up that next generation. Our advisors form study groups, some of which persist for decades, where they get together and help each other with their own businesses.

How does an early focus on insurance help advisors build their business? Our average advisor recruit is 28 years old, and they're typically working with a client who's within five years of their age. Those clients don't have as much money to manage. So, it's really challenging for a younger advisor to try to build a book of business from scratch, focused only on wealth. The reality is that someone who is 30 years old really needs protection of their income and [insurance] protection on their life, and they may not have a whole lot of assets to manage.

We have found that more than half of the clients we work with over a 10-year period migrate from mass [market] and mass affluent into affluent. They started with us when they were younger and at a different stage and they had more of an insurance and risk protection need.

Are young advisors doing less planning with those clients? No, planning is necessary from the jump, but they're not going to be able to build a career on it without incorporating some of that [insurance] risk protection early. And then they grow with their clients over time.

You're close in age to many next-gen advisors. Does that help you relate to them? I think that I can talk to a lot of next-gen advisors about things in our personal lives. I'm also in the earlier stages of my career, and in the earlier stages of building a new team, and a relatively new role.

A lot of the trust that a home office or corporate leader can build with an advisor is rooted in understanding that you come from the same place and have a lot of the same general challenges that you want to overcome. It helps me relate to that 35-year-old or 40-year-old advisor who's juggling starting a family, building a business, and trying to achieve their professional goals.

You started out as an analyst on Northwestern Mutual's investment side, what made you move to managing the field force? I had an opportunity to support a financial project related to one of our biggest agencies in our field force. I had no previous exposure to it. I ended up getting so deeply involved that I moved into this agency in California for a couple of years. I spent time watching advisors work with clients every day, build their business, and start their career.

I was drawn to the impact that they created and the kinds of businesses they were building, and I wanted to be closer to it. I knew I probably didn't have the courage to start on my own, but if I could aid or encourage others to do it right, that would be a lot of fun. So, I came back to Northwestern Mutual's headquarters in Milwaukee and found my way to working with the field. I've been in that space ever since.

You've helped advisors at every stage of their business. What have you learned that shapes the way you lead? One of the things I've learned from working closely with advisors is just how difficult their jobs are.

The reality is that while there's a great demand and need for what they do in society, that demand is somewhat latent. They're met with more "no's" than "yeses." That's grown my admiration for their ability to not just put together a great financial plan, but to compel people to act and take steps toward financial security.

To help, we're always working to provide a base level of service that everyone can leverage and then tailor that support to fit different stages of an advisor's career.

Given the challenges, what makes financial advising an attractive career path? We see three principal advantages: The first is the ability to build your business the way you see fit, and the ability to work with a segment of the market that you're most excited about. That certainly appeals to those who are more entrepreneurial-minded, but also to those who have been in the corporate environment who have had their goals changed on them, or they've gone through a restructuring and been pushed out of a role.

The second is an unlimited opportunity to make an impact on their own lives. This career is, in many ways, a true meritocracy. Our advisors can come in and earn unlimited income and, frankly, build unlimited equity value in their business if they're successful in positively impacting clients.

Finally, there's this element of psychic income -- knowing that what they're doing is making a difference. That impact, in particular, appeals to this next generation. We're seeing more and more, with Gen Z, it's less the income opportunity that we need to highlight first. It's more the impact.

Is it fair to say that the profession has evolved to allow for greater work-life balance? Yes. If you dialed the clock back a few decades, the industry was dominated by wirehouse advisors who were employees with less agency and control over how they built their businesses. We've seen this shift in the industry toward independence. One of the reasons for that is the desire to have control over both how the business is built and how to make sure it is part of a broader life blend, where the advisor can choose how much of their own capacity they want to put in.

We know that Northwestern Mutual advisors want to get paid through income and equity -- driving hard to maximize the financial rewards of their career. But they also want to get paid while having independence, including being able to go to their kids' school and sporting events. And they're not as concerned about driving income at that time -- they're paid more through the impact of the work they're doing with their clients.

I think the industry is going to continue to shift toward independence, to allow and empower the advisor to choose how they get paid. Maybe that changes through the different stages of their career.

Looking ahead, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for next-gen advisors? The need for what our industry does has never been greater. There's a $483 trillion retirement gap in the United States, and a $230 trillion protection gap. At the same time, credit card debt is at an all-time high, and the median bank account, according to Bankrate, has $8,000 in it.

This country needs financial guidance and financial help. At the same time, our industry is not positioned to deliver it at the scale we need. The average advisor, depending on which study you look at, is in their late 50s. As they begin to think more and more about retirement, who's going to be there to support their existing clients and then pick up the next generation? Young advisors have the opportunity to step into a growth industry with a big need.

What's the role of financial services firms in filling that need? We need to focus on building the next generation of advisors, not buying current advisors from one another. If we're truly going to solve this supply-and-demand imbalance, and the need in society for more financial planning support, we need to focus, as an industry, on true, organic growth in the number of advisors. The benefit would be more potential successors, more joint-work partners, more opportunity for multigenerational clients.

But so much of what we see in the headlines around the financial advisor space is who's moving from one firm to the other firm. What we don't read enough about is who's committing to growing the industry.

Thanks, John.

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2025 14:45 ET (18:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.