Nearly two centuries after its founding as a securities brokerage, Janney Montgomery Scott is betting that its next phase of growth will be one of addition through subtraction. The Philadelphia-based firm recently shed its capital markets businesses to focus on wealth management, which means it can now evaluate every strategic decision against a single question, says president and CEO Tony Miller: "Does this help our financial advisors better serve clients, grow their businesses and create long-term value?"
Speaking with Barron's Advisor, Miller, whose firm boasts more than 900 advisors and manages more than $110 billion, says he's energized by the firm's ownership by private-equity firm KKR, which acquired it from Penn Mutual in 2024. He lays out Janney's advisor recruitment strategy, which includes both conventional cash-based transition packages and equity in the firm. And he shares the reasons Janney isn't interested in "owning" the firm's end clients.
Janney sold off its capital markets businesses in 2025 and 2025. What's the company becoming? In many ways we haven't changed. We've always been built around financial advisors and the clients they serve. We believe the strongest client relationships are created when advisors have the freedom to run their practices in a way that reflects the clients' needs, supported by personalized service and accessible leadership of a firm focused 100% on wealth management. All resources of the firm are put directly into advisors' and clients' success. And today we're investing more deliberately to strengthen that model and give more advisors and clients access to it. So part of our story recently has been a narrowing of our focus in what has always made us special.
Talk about why you shed the investment bank. We did divest our capital markets business; historically, wealth management's always been about 90% of our business anyway, and now it is our singular focus. This gives us clarity about where we want to invest and how we want to grow. Every strategic decision can be evaluated against the same question: Does this help our financial advisors better serve clients, grow their businesses, and create long-term value? Advisors increasingly want to run their practices with an entrepreneurial mind-set, but they don't want to operate on an island. They want flexibility, ownership of client relationships, the ability to shape their businesses, but also sophisticated planning, integrated technology, personalized service, and some operational scale. Most importantly, they want a true partner who continues to invest alongside you. We've decided to bring all those elements together in one singularly focused wealth business. We're not a collection of acquired firms, brands, or cultures. And we're not a small RIA that requires advisors to build or rent all that infrastructure themselves. We're one firm with one strategy, focused exclusively on wealth management, and our opportunity is to support more advisors and clients within that model.
Talk about the importance of KKR's ownership. We partnered with KKR about two years ago, and that partnership has allowed us to operate now as a private independent company with employee ownership. We've aligned with a real partner. They spend time with our leadership team. They bring ideas and perspective. They ask good questions, challenge us constructively, and help us execute more effectively. But they believe firmly in the advisor and the value proposition around personalized advice. They care deeply about the future of Janney, and our interests are aligned around building long-term value. That's helped us invest in technology, advisor growth, financial planning, recruiting, practice management, and our ease of doing business. It's a partnership that I've seen unlock the full potential of Janney.
What is Janney's unique identity? We focus very intentionally on ensuring that as we grow, we're still maintaining the advisor-and client-focused culture that's made us successful for nearly 200 years. We believe in the independence and autonomy of the advisor. We believe that the advisor-client relationship is paramount. We believe in very personalized, curated, professional advice delivered through those financial advisors, and that Janney's role is to be a service company that stands as an extension of the financial advisor. We are here to assist with whatever clients need, to bolster advisor teams through intellectual capital around estate planning, trusts, tax advice. Being an employee-owned company, everyone at Janney has a level of ownership, and as the advisors succeed, the firm succeeds and we all win together.
What's your recruiting pitch to advisors? We're having the best recruiting results Janney's ever had. Our recruiting proposition begins with the experience of the advisors that are already here. Over the past year we've had a 99% retention rate, which is one of the clearest indicators that our advisor experience works. Advisors overwhelmingly choose Janney because they value the culture, the independence to run their practices the way they see fit, their ownership of their client relationships, access to leadership, a real voice in our strategy and the personalized relationship-driven support that they deserve.
This matters in recruiting. Experienced advisors are making a long-term decision about where they can best serve their clients and build the next chapter of the business. We have a very competitive deal, and it's certainly part of the equation. But they look closely at whether other advisors are successful, they're supported, they're happy, and they choose to stay. We give advisors the freedom to operate with an entrepreneurial mind-set. We stand as a service company behind them. The same experience that's driven retention drives our recruiting results. Advisors see a firm where highly professional advisors stay, build enduring businesses, and have the support to grow.
From a recruiting perspective, what things are advisors dissatisfied with at the firms they're leaving? It's predominantly a lack of support. There are many great firms out there, but they've gotten very large and complex. The business has been a bit depersonalized from a service perspective, and advisors are looking for a more engaged business partner. Many firms now have multiple business lines. That introduces competition for resources. And it can introduce conflicts into the discussions advisors have with clients.
Where have you recently invested in your platform? Our focus has been in areas that strengthen that client-advisor relationship. We've launched an enhanced CRM platform. We have launched a new financial planning suite of services. We're investing in intellectual capital to be an extension of the financial advisor team around high-net-worth solutions. We recently launched a tax-aware investment platform to help with tax-efficient investing. The fact that we're a self-clearing firm gives us complete control over the client and advisor experience. It also creates accountability because we aren't renting all these solutions from another firm. So we can be more responsive to our advisors' and their clients' needs. And they have a voice in this experience.
Can you say a word about your artificial intelligence strategy? Like many firms, we are investing in AI. We're doing this as a complement to our advisors and how they engage their clients. We've done very specific tools around meeting prep and note taking and action items that come out of those meetings, and we drive them right into the advisor workflows to help streamline their client service models. For example, we're using AI to serve data on our advisor businesses direct to their desktops, so they can easily gain insights into their client and their book of business. We continue to make these investments. Part of the value here at Janney is that given our size and scale, we can be agile in the space and respond quickly as those tools evolve.
Are the AI investments something that will pay off in the future in terms of boosting advisor productivity, or are you seeing substantial productivity gains already? We're already seeing it, especially in things like the client service model and how we can streamline some of the more mundane tasks. The meeting preparation and action-item tools have saved a number of hours per client meeting. We've gotten tremendous feedback from our advisors and their teams as to the efficiency and client experience gains they've already seen. So it's quickly evolving, and we'll see what the next suite of tools are that help improve our value prop to our clients through our financial advisors.
What is what are the key metrics that you look at to determine return on your investments? It starts with on our client satisfaction metrics: Are they feeling the value of these modern tools? We can measure that through our advisor promoter scores, and we measure the time and energy that's saved in serving our clients. It's not always directly measured by way of P&L. Some of it is investments that just continue to enhance our competitive position.
Can you say more about your position that the advisor owns the client relationship? We firmly believe that the relationship is between the client and the financial advisor. That's where the value is provided; that's where the advice and expertise lies. We believe we're a service company, and it's our job to have advisors want to stay because we've created an experience that they value, a platform where they're happy, the autonomy to build and manage their business the way they see fit, and that their clients are satisfied. If we do our job on that front, we don't have to resort to other means to try and own the client. We need to provide the expertise that makes that happen naturally.