Executive summary
Your clients follow you, or the deal is worthless.
UBS advisors call with the questions in the wrong order. They start with the deal: who is paying the largest up-front, what the deferred looks like, how many years it locks. The deal is the third question, not the first. The first question is whether your clients follow you at all, and at UBS that question has a specific answer, written in December 2017.
On December 1, 2017, UBS withdrew from the Protocol for Broker Recruiting. The Protocol lets a departing advisor take five pieces of client information, name, address, phone, email, and account title, and move without a lawsuit, but only when both the old firm and the new firm are signatories. Since UBS left, a departing UBS advisor no longer has that cover. The move is governed by the employment agreement instead: the non-solicit, the confidentiality language, and whatever deferred compensation remains unvested.
That single fact reorders everything. A Merrill or Wells Fargo advisor still moves under Protocol. A UBS advisor moves with discipline, or does not move cleanly at all.
Spartan Advisory is independent. We are not a competitor recruiting you, and we are not a broker-dealer or a custodian. We help you answer the portability question first, then sequence the employment agreement, the channel, and the deal in the order that protects the book.
Section 01 · The order of operations
Sequence decides the outcome.
Because UBS is out of Protocol, a move is a legal exercise before it is an economic one. The order we recommend is the same every time, and it is the reverse of how most advisors approach it.
- 01
Portability read
Household by household across your top relationships: which clients follow, what travels, and what stays. The sixty-second Portability check is the on-ramp.
- 02
Counsel-level agreement review
The non-solicit, the confidentiality language, and any unvested deferred comp, read by an attorney before any recruiter has your name.
- 03
Channel and firm selection
Where the practice actually fits: wirehouse, regional, independent broker-dealer, or your own RIA. Each carries a different economic and ownership profile.
- 04
Deal and transition
The package negotiated against a book you can move, then the first ninety days executed. The deal comes last because it is worth only what the clients who follow you make it worth.
We do not work for the wirehouses, and we do not work for the firms recruiting you. At UBS, the legal path to your book is the first thing to get right. The deal is the last.Pete Secret · Founder, Spartan Advisory
Section 02 · The record
The exits are structural.
The 2025 numbers describe a firm losing senior producers faster than it is replacing them, and losing the assets with them.
- A record year of outflows
- UBS Wealth Management Americas reported net new asset outflows of $8.6 billion in the third quarter of 2025 and roughly $14 billion in the fourth, the heaviest since the November 2024 compensation change.
- Headcount down
- Americas advisor headcount fell to about 5,772 by year-end 2025, down 3.3% year over year.
- Teams on the move
- Teams managing nearly $52 billion in combined assets left UBS in 2025; 22 teams departed in the third quarter alone.
- A thinner-margin unit
- The Americas wealth business runs at a pre-tax margin below 13%, against roughly 29% at Morgan Stanley. The gap keeps cost pressure on the field.
- A compensation reversal
- After cutting grid payouts for advisors under $750,000 in production in November 2024, UBS raised pay in its 2026 plan, released in September 2025, to slow the attrition.
Exhibit 01 · UBS Wealth Management Americas, 2025
This is a structural exit, not a handful of outliers. The teams leaving are the senior, fee-based practices a firm fights hardest to keep.
Section 03 · Why they leave
Ten reasons producers keep leaving.
- Protocol withdrawal still binds
- The December 2017 exit continues to shape every move. The legal calculus has not changed, and advisors who modeled a move years ago return to find it the same.
- A compensation reset
- Grid changes compressed payouts at specific production bands, and mid-book teams were the most active in the window before the plan adjusted.
- Strategic ambiguity in Wealth USA
- Public coverage of the unit's posture under new leadership has produced uncertainty that advisors describe in intake conversations.
- Competitive recruiting deals
- Up-front transition packages at Morgan Stanley, RBC, Rockefeller, and Raymond James have stayed materially competitive with UBS's own offers.
- Bank cross-sell
- Some teams cite pressure to participate in lending and bank programs as a quality-of-life concern rather than a compensation one.
- Technology
- The pace of platform improvement is a recurring theme, particularly among operationally heavy practices.
- Succession and equity
- Multi-generation teams are increasingly weighing RIA paths to capture equity in the succession outcome.
- Leadership changes
- Changes in regional and branch leadership have repeatedly preceded waves of moves in the 2025 record.
- Deferred-comp timing
- Teams reaching vesting milestones are timing decisions to those windows rather than to the calendar.
- The independent thesis
- For larger teams, the depth of competitive RIA and hybrid platforms has lowered the friction of leaving.
Section 04 · The non-Protocol playbook
A legal-first exit, by design.
Outside the Protocol, zero client information may leave with you unless your agreement and counsel allow it. That raises the cost of a careless move and rewards a disciplined one. The playbook is the same order of operations, executed with a paper trail.
- 01
Read the book before the market
Establish what actually travels: fee-based versus brokerage, lending and banking ties, proprietary and alternative holdings that will not re-register.
- 02
Clear the agreement with counsel
The non-solicit and confidentiality terms, the resignation mechanics, and any unvested deferred comp, understood in dollars before a single conversation.
- 03
Select the channel, then the firm
Match the practice to the model first, and only then run the destination shortlist. The right channel makes the deal negotiation simpler.
- 04
Negotiate and transition
The package against a book you can move, then the first ninety days, which are the only ninety days that decide retention.
Reverse this order and you negotiate a package for a book that may not fully travel. That is the most expensive mistake a UBS advisor can make.
Exhibit 02 · Selected UBS team departures, 2025, by assets and destination
Publicly reported moves, drawn from a much larger set. The destinations span every channel, which is the point: the right home depends on the practice, not the headline.
Pete Secret
Read the portability question first.
A confidential conversation, and the sixty-second check, before any firm has your name.
Sources · Financial Planning · AdvisorHub · Banking Dive · WealthManagement.com · Diamond Consultants · FinancialAdvisorTransitions · Spartan Advisory analysis
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