Merrill Lynch Wealth Management: Recruiting, Pay and Advisor Moves

Merrill, the wealth unit of Bank of America, has had a year of strong financial results and difficult headcount numbers. This page follows its recruiting and attrition, its pay plan, the regulatory and legal matters touching the brokerage, and what they mean for Merrill advisors. It is updated as new filings and moves are confirmed.

The financial picture is solid. Bank of America's third-quarter 2026 earnings release, filed with the SEC on Oct. 14, showed Global Wealth and Investment Management revenue of $7.1 billion, up 13% from a year earlier, and net income of $1.5 billion. The segment, which combines Merrill and the Private Bank, logged $20 billion of AUM flows in the quarter. Merrill alone held $4.2 trillion in client balances, including $1.9 trillion in AUM, and added about 4,200 net new households with at least $500,000. The release does not give an advisor count.

Headcount is where the pressure shows. An industry recruiting report covered by WealthManagement.com and InvestmentNews put Merrill's net loss of experienced advisors at 404 in the first half of 2026, the largest of the four big wirehouses, which together lost 517 on a net basis. WealthManagement.com noted that more than 100 of the Merrill departures went to J.P. Morgan, which suggests a meaningful share were branch-based advisors rather than private-client brokers. A separate analysis of regulatory filings by Wolfe Research, cited by WealthManagement.com, found Bank of America with a net loss of 552 advisors through Aug. 13. Our first-half breakdown has the full figures.

The biggest exit predates this year but still shapes it. In September 2025, Merrill's corporate and institutional advisory group left to form OpenArc Corporate Advisory, an Atlanta RIA with minority backing from Dynasty Financial Partners, which had overseen $129 billion. Merrill sued, alleging a premeditated "corporate raid." The case was paused for arbitration, and this summer a federal judge in Atlanta refused Merrill's request to restart it against Dynasty, WealthManagement.com reported. See our OpenArc launch coverage and the ruling.

Merrill has answered with high-end recruiting. Its Private Wealth Management unit took a 14-person Graystone Consulting team from Morgan Stanley in Boston with more than $13 billion in client assets, a move that rebuilds some of the institutional capacity lost to OpenArc (our story). It also added the Aliaskari Group, about $1.2 billion, from Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management in McLean, Virginia, along with advisors from Truist and Wells Fargo, according to WealthManagement.com (our coverage). Losses continued at the smaller end: UBS picked up a $500 million Merrill practice in Bellevue, Washington (details).

Pay policy points the same way as recruiting: upmarket. For 2026, Merrill left its core grid unchanged, according to the company memo described by InvestmentNews, but cut the payout rate to 20% on households whose combined assets and loans fall between $250,000 and $500,000, Financial Planning reported. Households under $250,000 still pay the advisor nothing, a policy dating to 2012. The firm extended its grace period for new households to six months from three and kept growth awards for banking and for deposit and money-market flows. Our story on the small-household threshold explains who is affected.

The regulatory record is busier than at most peers this year. On June 29, the SEC announced a settled order in which Merrill agreed to a $7.5 million penalty for failing to file suspicious activity reports between April 2020 and September 2024. In October, Treasury announced anti-money-laundering penalties against Bank of America led by a $1.2 billion FinCEN assessment and a $750 million OCC fine; those orders target the bank, not the brokerage (our report). On Oct. 15, NASAA said Merrill would pay restitution after a multistate review found its minimum commissions produced nearly $549,000 in unreasonable charges on small trades (our report). And on Oct. 7, a federal judge in Manhattan gave preliminary approval to a $39 million settlement over Merrill Edge retirement cash sweep rates, according to plaintiffs' counsel (our story).

For Merrill advisors, the message is consistent. The firm rewards larger households, bank deposits and lending, and it is spending to land big teams. Smaller practices face lower pay on part of their books and more competition from J.P. Morgan and independent platforms. Compliance attention is rising across the parent company, so advisors should expect tighter surveillance and onboarding scrutiny, though no order we have reviewed spells out specific changes for brokers.

WirehouseHUB reports on Merrill from filings, regulatory records and named sources. We do not recruit advisors or accept payment from any firm we cover.

Stories

• RBC Pulls $2B BofA Private Bank Duo in La Jolla

  Second BofA Private Bank hire into RBC La Jolla in about a month — Behun (MD) and Harris (SVP) with $2B+ firm-reported assets, under a Merrill-trained SoCal complex director, inside RBC's push to add 600 U.S. advisors by 2029.

• Merrill's 2027 Advisor Pay Plan Keeps the Grid Flat, Raises the Growth Award Bar and Adds a Lending Bonus

  Merrill's 2027 advisor compensation plan keeps the core grid unchanged and moves the incentives into growth, banking and lending awards.

• Wells Fargo and Merrill Pay $4.4M to Eight States Over Minimum Commissions on Tiny Trades

  Merrill Lynch and two Wells Fargo broker-dealers will pay a combined $4.4 million and refund clients after eight states found they charged outsized minimum commissions on very small stock trades.

• BofA Takes $1.2B Money-Laundering Penalty, and Merrill's Own SAR Record Sits Close Behind

  Federal regulators hit Bank of America with more than $1.21 billion in anti-money-laundering and sanctions penalties on Oct. 13, and the findings point at the same monitoring system Merrill Lynch relies on for its own suspicious activity reporting.

• Merrill's Singer Maxey Team Joins Raymond James in Bend, Oregon

  Singer Maxey Wealth Management left Merrill for Raymond James in Bend with about $4.7 million in reported annual production, clearing WirehouseHUB's automatic coverage bar for wirehouse moves.

• Merrill and UBS Push First-Half Wirehouse Advisor Losses Past All of 2025

  The four wirehouses ended the first six months of 2026 with 517 fewer experienced advisors than they started with, according to an industry recruiting report covered this week by WealthManagement.com, InvestmentNews and Wealth Solutions Report.

• Merrill Adds About $770M in Teams From Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo

  Merrill has pulled in two advisory groups that together report roughly $770 million in client assets, according to InvestmentNews, splitting the haul between a New York Park Avenue market hire out of Morgan Stanley and a Boca Raton addition from Wells Fargo Advisors.

• Merrill Agrees to Pay $39 Million to Settle Merrill Edge Retirement Cash-Sweep Class Action

  The proposed deal, which still needs a federal judge's approval, would end a 2019 suit claiming Merrill Edge retirement savers earned a fraction of a percent on swept cash while other brokerages paid about 2%.

• Greenwood Wealth Partners' David Lorbiecki-Led $1.25B Team Exits D.M. Kelly for Raymond James as Merrill Bleeds Advisors to UBS and Ameriprise

  Merrill Lynch is hemorrhaging talent in both coastal markets and the Midwest simultaneously. If your book sits between $120M and $1.25B, every major platform—Raymond James, UBS, and Ameriprise—is actively building a case for your move right now.

• Merrill Lands $1.2B Aliaskari Group From Morgan Stanley in McLean

  Merrill pulled a named PWM team back from Morgan Stanley — Aliaskari left Merrill in 2012 and just returned with $1.2B and two partners, a concrete wire-to-wire win under Moynihan’s more-advisors mandate.

• John Pham's Billion-Dollar Merrill Lynch Team Joins UBS in Silicon Valley

  Assets Under Management (AUM): about $1.3 Billion Trailing 12-Month Revenue: about $8 Million Previous Office: Santana Row (San Jose, CA) New Firm: UBS

• Merrill Raids Morgan Stanley's $13B Book While Morgan Stanley Reframes Headcount Losses as an Asset Story

  If you're a high-AUM producer at either firm, your phone is about to ring. Both wirehouses are competing fiercely for experienced teams—they're just describing the battlefield differently. Know your market value before someone else defines it for you.

• BofA CEO Moynihan Tells Merrill It Needs More Advisors to Unlock Growth — Here's What That Means for Recruiting

  Merrill Lynch is actively competing for experienced lateral hires again — advisors at rival wirehouses are now a primary recruitment target, and deal structures are likely to improve as the firm races to fill geographic gaps.

• Merrill Poaches $1.2B UBS Team in Santa Fe: John Vazquez & Manuel Monasterio Flip the Script in the Desert Southwest

  Merrill is running a systematic high-AUM recruiting playbook across regional markets—if you're at UBS, Morgan Stanley, or Wells Fargo managing a book north of $1B, expect a call. The compensation packages are real, and the Desert Mountain market is clearly a target.

• Citi Hires $3B Private Banker from Bank of America

  Citi is adding senior private-bank talent as it expands its wealth platform, but the reported asset figure is not a standardized measure of transferred assets.

• John Vazquez & Manuel Monasterio Bring $1.2B, $4.7M in Production from UBS to Merrill Lynch in Santa Fe

  If you're a high-producing UBS team watching your colleagues defect, Merrill's recruiting machine is clearly writing checks big enough to move $1.2 billion books out of New Mexico. Know your number.

• UBS Recruits $500M Merrill Team in Bellevue

  The Bellevue move gives UBS a $500 million planning-focused practice in the Pacific Northwest.

• NewEdge Lands $3.1B BofA Private Bank Team in Florida

  NewEdge is using its employee wealth channel to recruit beyond traditional brokerage teams, adding another multibillion-dollar private-bank group in two weeks.

• Al Hammond's $13B Graystone Team Defects to Merrill in One of 2026's Largest Wirehouse Moves

  This move signals Merrill's willingness to deploy serious transition capital to capture institutional consulting AUM at scale — and confirms that even entrenched Graystone teams are in play.

• Merrill Pulls Morgan Stanley Advisors Into Chicago North & Nashville While LPL Raids Cetera Across Two States

  If you're at Morgan Stanley in Chicago or Nashville, expect a Merrill recruiter call soon—and if you're at a mid-size IBD like Cetera, LPL's checkbook is clearly open. The battleground is every major metro market, and transition packages are only getting richer.

• Federal Judge Blocks Merrill Lynch From Dragging Dynasty Financial Into FINRA Arbitration Over OpenArc Breakaway

  Wirehouses can no longer assume FINRA arbitration clauses in advisor contracts automatically bind third-party RIA support platforms like Dynasty. This ruling tilts the playing field toward breakaway teams and their platform partners, making the independent channel marginally safer to land in.

• UBS Raids BofA's Florida Private Bank for a $1.3B Team Flying Below Radar

  UBS is targeting non-registered private bank talent — relationship managers and trust officers who move assets without appearing on BrokerCheck — as a stealth recruiting lane that bypasses the public scoreboard entirely. If your firm isn't watching this channel, it's already behind.

• UBS Lands $1.3B Tampa Team Poached Directly from Bank of America Private Bank

  UBS is targeting Bank of America's private banking clientele in high-growth Florida markets — if you're a BofA advisor in the Southeast managing significant AUM, expect a call.

• Swiss, Not European

  This article examines a common perception among financial advisors considering UBS and explains why Switzerland's regulatory environment differs significantly from the European Union.

• K. Shaun Cosby & Edward Powell Pull $460M Book From Merrill, Hand Morgan Stanley a $5M Birmingham Win

  Morgan Stanley has now poached multiple high-producing Merrill teams out of Birmingham in quick succession. If you're a Merrill advisor in the Southeast watching your comp structure, this is your peers voting with their feet—and Morgan Stanley is clearly dangling the right incentives to close the deal.