Even with those challenges, rep productivity and client cash balances expanded in the third quarter.

If approved for an IPO, the blank check company will face stiff competition among the growing ranks of RIA acquirers.

Meanwhile, the wirheouse’s advisor headcount ticks down and recruitment loans drop, again.

BNY Mellon’s CEO also sees a distribution opportunity for the company’s proprietary funds.

Clients opened almost 1.2 million retail accounts, boosting flows to mutual funds and ETFs, the firm reports.

Despite growing to about $1.1 trillion in AUM, senior executives made a series of bets to keep pace in a changing industry that have yet to pay off.

CEO Sergio Ermitto said "buybacks have been demonized way too much."

The chief executive outlined a future where offices need not be fully staffed.

The company allocated $5.1 billion for loan losses in the second quarter, the most since 2010.

Wealth management profits fell, but a steep rise in transactional business offset some of the decline.

Fixed-income trading revenue almost tripled, driving a 73% jump in total trading that surged past expectations.

The bank has been in turmoil relative to peers for years. The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic only made matters worse.

It’s the second consecutive quarter that trading set a record, as the bank’s Wall Street unit is helping prop up the consumer-lending division.

“Overall there were not many positive data points to hang your hat on,” according to analysts. Advisor headcount, net interest income and assets were down.

The firm set aside a record $9.5 billion for credit losses, about $4 billion more than analysts had expected, as it braces for a wave of coronavirus-related defaults.

More than 300 reps have switched BDs so far this year, with LPL and Cambridge Investment Research completing the two largest grabs.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns, advisors are relying on the firm’s technology more than ever.

The IBD network had been preparing for disruption, CEO Adam Antoniades says, and it has the financial flexibility it needs to boost financial advisors’ practices.

“The world has become more digital, less global and more local,” says Amy Lo, co-head of the firm’s Asia Pacific wealth division.

CEO Dan Arnold says the pandemic “will create some structural change across the market and the industry.”