Merrill Makes a Play for Younger, Less Affluent Clients
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What are the top news briefs about taxes and airlines introduced at the start of the episode?
Here's your Money Briefing. I'm J.R. Whalen at The Wall Street Journal in New York. It's not just the robo-advisors going after millennials and younger people hoping to line up their banking business. The big banks are in on the action, too. We've got details coming up. First, these money and market stories you should know. The newest Wall Street Journal NBC News poll indicates the new tax law hasn't made much of a difference in whether people think they're winning or losing in doing their taxes. Just 17% of those polled said they are paying less in taxes under the new law. while 28% said they're paying more. The rest say they don't know or that their taxes have barely changed. And those numbers are in line with last year's poll.
The data so far this year shows that 48% of households are getting a tax cut greater than $500 compared with what they would have paid under the old tax law. Just 5.5% of households face tax increases greater than $100. And here's a dose of good news for the major U.S. airlines and passengers. Their performance scores are the best in about 30 years. By that, we mean consumer complaints, on-time performance, and things like mishandled baggage. The airline quality rating takes in several factors across all major U.S. airlines, and Delta topped the list. On-time performance edged up, its mishandled baggage rate was essentially the same, and consumer complaints dropped.
What does the Wall Street Journal NBC News poll reveal about how people feel about the new tax law?
That's according to the study. And among the nine major airlines in the U.S., consumer complaints with the transportation department were down 23% in 2018 compared to a year earlier. Baggage mishandling was also down, as was involuntary denied boardings. That's a technical term for being bumped. But what was also down? On-time arrivals. They edged from 80.2% down to 79.6%.
Millennials and the younger generation are in line to inherit roughly $30 trillion over the next 20 years. And while their current financial holdings might not make them candidates for wealth management advisors, banks like Merrill Lynch want to develop relationships with them now. And Rachel Louise Enzine, our Wall Street Journal reporter, is here with some details. So Rachel, this involves Merrill Lynch getting some help from its parent Bank of America to reach this younger generation.
So what we've reported on Monday is that Bank of America is going to be putting 300 employees inside the traditional Merrill Lynch wealth management offices, whose job is to sort of help younger, less affluent investors get into digital products. So basically, the goal here is to make it so that these offices aren't just serving older, really wealthy clients. They also have some services for younger people with fewer assets.
This is an area where robo advisory firms have set the pace.
Yes. So that's basically why we thought this was really interesting is because it's a nod to the changing world of wealth management. And, you know, for a long time, a financial advisor, a traditional financial advisor was the only game in town. And, you know, you might not have enough money to qualify, but when you did, that was really your only choice. And now these robo advisors who have these digital investing tools for people have really cornered the market on folks with say below $250,000 in assets. And, you know, the traditional players are starting to worry that when those people make enough money for typical wealth products, they won't be customers anymore.
Right. So they don't want them to fall off the radar and eventually they will be in need of banking services.
Right, exactly. So the view is when that wealth transfer that you mentioned happens, which is predicted to be trillions of dollars, you know, you want those people to already be Merrill Lynch customers, even if they don't have that much money before that.
And among the big banks, it's not as if Merrill Lynch and Bank of America are the only big banks doing this. There are other competitors of theirs doing the same thing.
Yeah. So among the big banks, big banks with wealth businesses have, you know, developed these robo-advisors and so have the so-called discount brokerages.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What are the top news briefs about taxes and airlines introduced at the start of the episode?
0:05–1:28
2
What does the Wall Street Journal NBC News poll reveal about how people feel about the new tax law?
1:28–4:40
3
How have U.S. airline performance metrics changed recently and which carrier topped the rankings?
4:40–4:43
Speakers
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