Cetera advisors launch diversity and inclusion council

With a call for planners of all backgrounds to get involved, two representatives of one of the largest wealth managers launched a financial advisor diversity council at their firm.

Advisors Fanci Worthington and Stephen Oliver have been laying the groundwork for Cetera Financial Group’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Advisory Council since proposing the idea to CEO Adam Antoniades last year, after the murder of George Floyd led to nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. The Los Angeles-based wealth manager announced the committee of 12 advisors and an executive on April 21, though its first meeting came in December.

Although a new committee may appear a small step amid the severe underrepresentation in the planning profession, the approach has earned praise from advisors at firms like LPL Financial that have started them in recent years. An “FA Advisory Council” of a cross section of advisors would also advise Edward Jones under the wealth manager’s $34-million settlement of a racial discrimination case. At Cetera, the monthly council will lead efforts like a new series of conferences, business resource groups for advisors and scholarships for students studying financial planning.

“It's brick-by-brick, and that's something you'll always hear me say,” says Oliver, the founder of New York-based Manhattan Ridge Advisors. “It took us a long time to get here, so we're not going to have all this progress in six or eight months or even a year or two.”

Cetera Financial Group

After holding Cetera’s first Connect2Impact conference with some 1,000 attendees on April 20 with two more events slated for this year, Worthington and Oliver are specifically asking white male advisors to participate in the firm’s efforts. A lot has changed since Worthington was often the only woman at such events a decade ago, she says.

“This is an exciting time,” says Worthington, an advisor and branch manager with Cetera Investors in Charlotte, North Carolina. “There's still much more to do, but I can see that the needle is starting to move a little bit.”

In addition to the advisors serving as co-chairs, the executive sponsor of the council is LeAnn Rummel, the CEO of Cetera Financial Institutions. The other members are: Majdah AlQuhtani of Altus Wealth Management; Milton Cooley of Cetera Financial Specialists; Stanford Hirata of Woodcreek Wealth Management; Sheila Littleton of Cetera Financial Specialists; Andres Quintero of Provident Investment Services; Andrew Sampson of Wilde Wealth Management; Donna Stefans of Wealth Advisory Associates; Sylvester Thomas of Cetera Investors; David Treece of Treece Financial Group and Tony Yu of East West Bank.

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“It is time for us all to make a sustained commitment toward building a profession that truly lives into its purpose and seeks to mirror the next generation of clients,” Antoniades said in a statement. “This financial professional-led council is a wonderful example of the type of leadership and collaboration needed to bring about meaningful change.”

The available data on financial advisor demographics show how the ranks of women and advisors who are Black, Latino or other minorities decrease in the upper echelons of the profession.

Out of an estimated 514,000 personal financial advisors in 2020 tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 34% were women, 11% were Asian American, 8% were Hispanic and 8% were Black. In a more industry-specific analysis of 291,000 advisors released in January by Cerulli Associates, the share of women was only 18%, with lower numbers of Hispanic advisors (5%), along with those who are Asian (4%) or Black (3%). Out of more than 88,000 CFPs nationwide, just 2.5% are Latino and 1.7% are Black, while 23% are women, according to data from the CFP Board.

Antoniades has promised to act towards changing those stark figures, as one of nearly 2,000 CEOs signing on to the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge. With more than 7,500 advisors with annual revenue of $1.92 billion, Cetera is the No. 5 firm in Financial Planning’s IBD Elite rankings of independent broker-dealers. Over the past year, the firm started a diversity committee for corporate employees and employee resource groups for women, veterans and LGBTQ staff, too.

The advisor-specific resource committees will cater to the same groups, as well as young and minority advisors they will enable to connect with reps of the same background, according to Worthington and Oliver. The two of them and fellow council members have been discussing how to create training programs and other entry points for young people and career-changers that can usher in more diverse advisors to Cetera’s ranks and those of the planning profession overall.

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“It is tough to get started, but it's so rewarding; the turnover rate is just ridiculous,” Worthington says, citing the challenge of assembling enough assets and leads to build a book as a novice advisor. “These barriers are sometimes the reasons why we don't have diversity,” she adds.

Worthington and Oliver appointed the initial committee by picking at least two advisors from each of Cetera’s brands among those expressing interest, though they intend for the group’s makeup and selection process to change over time. No advisors of any background or political bent should feel excluded from the committee’s work, they say.

It’s “not a campaign against the white male,” says Oliver, who is Black. He compared the committee to his church. After many absences at services due to golfing during the warmer months of the year, Oliver feels much more welcomed by members simply telling him it’s good to see him again than he does by congregants who demand an explanation, he says.

“We're not trying to shame anyone,” Oliver says. “We're not asking anyone to explain the past 400-500 years, we're just asking people to be open-minded.”