This will be my first bank shop but I could not resist as it seems to pay very well. It is at a local bank with their personal investment rep. I am supposed to have a net worth of $750,000-$1 mill and have around $250,000 to meet with the target rep about. I am not to meet with anyone else. So I got off the phone with my target today. This was the appt setting call. He asked me all sorts of questions to figure out if I could meet with him or if I only qualified to meet with a lower level person(which I cannot do for this job). And then he asked if I have a million dollars that I plan to put with the bank right away as if not I could not meet with him. I was able to deflect that question by saying that I might ultimately give the bank that much money but right now I had a smaller amt.
The guidelines for the shop say I can say my net worth is $750,000. I am glad I did not tell him that as it would have messed up the whole job. But I was blindsided by the request to me to come in with my $1 mill right away.
Has anyone done this job and am I going to have to promise all sorts of things to keep this guy in the office talking to me when I have a mere $250,000 to give them right away with only a vague promise of another at least $750,000?. I am also not supposed to be knowledgeable at all about investments so I guess my million is all in CD's and under the mattress. This is for the big MSC. I am well versed in investments so that is why i took the shop. I have no problem pretending.

Acting. That is what makes shopping fun for me. The adrenaline rush of knowing they may find me out if I forget I'm acting.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2016 01:21AM by ValG.

To talk with a ML Wealth Management representative, you have to have at least $250,000 of investable assets. Preferably more. If you have less, then you will qualify just for Merrill Edge, which a "normal" advisor in a BofA branch can help you with. The normal financial advisor would love to have your $500,000 or $1,000,000 for their own account (not illegal or even unethical) but they are supposed to refer higher net worth individuals to wealth management. The Wealth Management representative will usually be an employee of ML, whereas the branch-based financial advisor is an employee of both BofA and ML. Sometimes the Wealth Management rep is also a BofA employee. You will learn from their business card. Many of the branch-based advisors are part of larger teams and get credit for referrals to the Wealth Management part of their team.

They are going to ask you a lot of questions because they have fiduciary responsibility and need to represent your best interests, not the best interests of themselves (potential commissions), the bank (more potential commissions), or ML (more potential commissions, trading fees, etc.). They need to qualify you, but initially you just need to quote approximate numbers, and not bring in statements (luckily).

Tell him that you are interviewing investment advisors. That is very common. Let him convince you that he or she is the best. If they want to know where else you are looking, mention one of the other large banks in your area. They do not have a way to check. Wells Fargo, Santander, and many others have wealth management divisions. Since I visit many banks, I know that some are interested only in selling annuities regardless of your personal situation. Those are not sold to most customers by reps who have fiduciary responsibility, although there are special circumstances where they would be appropriate.

One of my very first shops was to portray a high net worth individual. I visited a branch of a very large international bank based in Asia. I was treated so well, that I really wanted to be able to had over all the money I was pretending to have. I really enjoy bank shops of all types.

sandy,
Any cautious investor with $1 million or more would not have committed to moving all of it to his firm right off the bat. Let him court you. Say that you need to have confidence in his and his firm's program and judgement before just moving that much money around. It is time to turn the pressure to him to demonstrate that he has what you want. Make HIM qualify for your business. Not by being mean or loud, but just by calmly saying that you need to see what they can do for you before committing to move that much money.

This ms job is with the top guy with all the fancy initials who is in the wealth management division. He is my target since I am so rich. The issue was he was trying to send me to a lower person if I could not tell him over the phone I am bringing a cool mil tomorrow to our appt. He also asked me to bring all my statements...just a request but ridiculous from my point of view to show this person all my assets, acct numbers and where they are at our first meet!!!!
Anyway I told him my money was not all accessible right now and that if I brought him the whole mil right now I would have to divest myself of some which would involve penalties and fees on my end but that I could see moving it over in time. I just thought it strange that the msc said I could portray myself as someone with $750,000 in assets outside of my house ...in my mind that would include my 403 B, (like a 401K) which I cannot move until I retire when this guy does not even want to talk to me but thinks I should start with the lower bank employee person since I will only have $250,000 available right now to invest. Had I blurted out right away that my net worth was $750,000 I would have failed the job immediately as he would not be willing to waste his time on me as his lowest client must have at least a mil to put at this bank..
I think it will be interesting. I have no problem with this portrayal other than the concept that I have no financial type investments or even know much about stocks, mutual funds etc. when I am so rich (but I do have a friend who has several million and does not have any money anywhere but CD's so perhaps that is not so strange...perhaps I will pretend to be her. She uses her money to amass rental houses) And I have no intention of bringing any of my statements . This is not a job at Merrill Lynch but at one of the large national bank branches.

You put all your investments in Real Estate and after selling one of your apartment complexes you trying to figure out where to put money to avoid all the extreme volatility of the Market. Don't bring any statements or provide any SSN numbers because they have access through out electronic network to figure out your profile online. Bluff your way, if they get arrogant keep mentioning your real estate investments and you only feel safe with real estate and its their brokerages job to convince you where is a safe place to park all that cash your apartment sell is bringing in your account.


Don't feel bad because Goldman Sachs use to not pick up the phone with people's accounts less than $50 million during the Dot.Com bubble.

Pennies that is actually a good idea. I am using the CD maturing scenario that was given to me by the msc but I can certainly mention I am planning to sell a rental house soon. Definitely out of town. This guy already asked me where I lived and wanted to know the street when making the appt over the phone. I am using a fake name.
I think there will be a lot of evasion in this conversation. My big point is that the msc set me up to fail if I had told him what they said to tell him. I was vague so I got away with it.
I intend to contact the msc and suggest they need to change the guidelines on their scenario.

If it was allowed I may say I was coming into a large inheritance. It covers not having cash in hand and the lack of finance savvy. It also is very believable as the amount for an inheritance is not over the top.

Good luck with this, Sandy! And please let us know how it goes. Seems like if the MSC tells you to portray someone with a minimum of $750k in assets and $250k in liquid assets that should be what the target is looking for. Not for $1 million for immediate investment.... Good idea to let the MSC know about this; maybe the guidelines are old. Sounds like they sure need updating.

I did the shop last week. It all went well as I had not revealed my net worth before I was told $1 mill was the minimum I had to bring to the bank. I did contact the msc and they told me I was the first shopper where they said the amt they were suggesting was not enough. Perhaps because this banker's home office was in Beverly Hills. I am thinking they did not want any of the riff raff of Beverly Hills who were renting with only a 6 figure income. That is the only explanation I could come up with.
In any case, as suggested by the msc, I wrote out my narrative in word first worthy of a job with a fee of $75 only to get to the input part and find that all except one of the narrative boxes had a 1,000 character limit. I copied my paragraph for the first narrative into the small box where only about 3 lines showed and found I had a big red number under the box showing I had over 4,000 characters. Boy was it ever hard to try to delete 3,000 plus characters when all you could see at a time was about 300 of them. I probably should have gone back to my word document and rewritten it but I had no idea at the time that all the narrative boxes would be like that. The sample report they showed me before the job did not indicate a limit at all and in fact the first box said unlimited. This meeting took over an hour and there were a ton of questions I had to answer in each of those narrative boxes. If I ever do this shop again now I know they want a $20 report for this $75 shop. This shop was not bonused as far as I know.