Yesterday, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney announced that it would allow its advisers to use social media platforms, providing all 18,000 advisers access to LinkedIn and Twitter in June and graduating to Facebook soon after that.
It is the first large financial firm to do so, marking a sea-change in the industry’s resistance to adopting potentially confidentiality-threatening tools. Morgan Stanley’s only real social toe-dipping to date was the infamous report on How Teenagers Consume Media they commissioned from a 15-year-old on work experience.
However, Andy Saperstein, head of wealth management says, “Many of our clients have been demanding social media. Many of our advisers have been demanding it.”
Of course, it’s the clients that probably made the most impact. Staff are one thing, but when the guys who pay you big bucks start to demand something, you sit up and listen.