INDUSTRY TALK

Edward Jones Expands Offerings for High Net Worth Clients With Alternative Investments

Edward Jones is expanding its offerings to include alternative investments available to eligible clients in Edward Jones Generations™, the firm's first private client service for U.S. high net worth investors. This strategic move underscores the firm's commitment to providing sophisticated financial products, solutions and personalized experiences for clients with $10 million or more in investable assets.

Beginning May 5, Edward Jones Generations™ clients will have access to alternative investments focused on private markets including private equity, private credit and private real estate. Alternative investments will be delivered through the Edward Jones Advisory Solutions® Unified Managed Account (UMA) program, part of the firm's advisory fee-based solutions. Initially, this offering will be exclusive to Edward Jones Generations™ clients, with plans to expand the range of alternative investment options and client reach over time.

"Edward Jones is committed to helping our clients achieve their financial goals, and we are always looking to expand our products, solutions and experiences designed to help make these goals a reality," said Russ Tipper, Principal and Head of Products at Edward Jones. "We believe alternative investments represent an opportunity for our high net worth clients to diversify their portfolios."

OUR TAKE:

This is good news to existing EJ advisors. Edward Jones' recent launch of its private client service proves a couple different talking points I’ve heard the past few years. The first being that Edward Jones needed to offer something to attract / keep wealthy clients beyond the vanilla investment options. There’s been an uptick in clients leaving EJ recently in search of more offerings and/or services and that demographic probably skews higher-net-worth since they are the target market of other firms. The second being that the trend towards alt investments that has been sweeping the industry is not a fad but rather here to stay. Everyone knows EJ is not fast to adopt anything as it takes a more deliberate and diligent approach to everything…especially what’s on the menu for clients. The fact that they are now adding alts proves that they see the writing on the wall. By offering even a limited menu of alts and gatekeeping it to clients with $10million+ in assets, EJ is acknowledging the growing demand. For EJ advisors, I would be pushing leadership to lower the minimum asset requirement drastically. How many $10million+ clients does any one EJ advisor have? It should be offered to more of the “bread and butter” clients, and hopefully that happens sooner rather than later.