Prudential Wealth Advisors to centralize recruiting, targeting 2027 launch

Prudential Wealth Advisors will build a centralized recruiting organization and expects to be in market with it in the second half of 2027, president Pat Hynes told InvestmentNews.

Recruiting at the firm has been handled locally. Hynes said setting up the centralized version is a focus for next year. "We are standing up a centralized recruiting organization which will help us accelerate recruiting in the future," he said, adding: "it used to be done locally, but as we know, the competition is rich."

Hynes said the firm has "done the research to show that a centralized recruiting is the place to win," and pointed to LPL Financial: "that's how LPL goes to market to recruit their independent advisors." Two leads for the new organization are being interviewed, he said. Until it is staffed, an advisor taking a call from Prudential is still talking to the local structure the firm says it wants to replace.

Advisors can examine the LPL relationship now, before the centralized recruiting organization is staffed. First announced in August 2023, the partnership moved the retail brokerage and investment advisory assets of Prudential's advisors to LPL from Fidelity Financial Services. Integration was completed in 2024, with LPL acting as a service provider for the advisors, and the two companies expanded the partnership with a retirement income tie-up last year.

Prudential is also pushing alternatives through that platform. "PGIM, which is our investment organization, just rolled out private equity, private credit," Hynes said, adding that the firm is "on the LPL platform, which is the first broker-dealer to offer it." The PGIM Partners Group Multi Asset Fund spans private equity, private credit and real estate through a jointly developed PGIM/Partners Group offering.

Prudential Wealth Advisors reports $44 billion in assets under management, up from $27 billion in 2023, spread across 3,000 advisors. That works out to roughly $14.7 million per advisor on average.

Hynes describes a change in process and reach, not in terms. He said the yardstick will be execution: "Our big success will be executing on the recruiting model for 2027."