FOR RELEASE
November 23, 2009

CONTACT
Kate Hendrickson
303.850.3079

IMCA Membership Grows into New Segments
Advisor ranks trend toward regional and independent broker-dealer firms

DENVER—November 23, 2009—Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA^®) recently released its 2009 membership profile, produced in collaboration with Cerulli Associates, which highlights key practice, client, product use, and demographic findings about IMCA members.

One notable change is that the percentage of independent advisors within IMCA has grown to 25 percent of membership, up from less than 20 percent three years ago. In addition, members employed by regional broker-dealer firms nearly doubled over the past year, from 6.2 percent to 11.7 percent.

“IMCA has been fortunate to experience membership growth and high retention during these tough economic times, and we were surprised to see increases in the percentage of members from the independent and regional advisory channels,” said Sean Walters, CAE, IMCA’s deputy executive director.

IMCA membership has grown by 30 percent between 2006 and 2009, and 10 percent between January 2008 and October 2009. The association is currently home to 7,578 members, and last month IMCA certified its 6,000th Certified Investment Management Analyst^SM (CIMA^®) professional.

“Wirehouse firms are still the predominant source of new members and CIMA certification candidates, with almost 60 percent of 2009 applications coming from the big four firms,” according to Walters.

Fifty-one percent of IMCA members fall into an investment consulting and/or wealth management practice type, serving a combination of institutional and retail clients, and an additional 11 percent serve institutional clients only (endowments, foundations, pension funds, etc.). Thirteen percent of IMCA members are wholesalers or executives from asset management companies, and 12 percent describe themselves as financial planners.

According to the profile, nearly two-thirds of IMCA members’ retail clients have a net worth of more than $1 million. The average assets under management of IMCA members is $292 million and the average assets under advisement for institutional consultant members is $5.1 billion.

The full electronic profile may be downloaded from IMCA’s Web site at www.IMCA.org/main/do/Profile.

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Methodology: In January 2009, IMCA distributed a survey link to more than 7,200 members providing access to a proprietary Cerulli Associates online survey instrument. The total respondent base of 495 is a sample of the investment advisor, broker-dealer, wholesaler, and institutional consulting membership of Investment Management Consultants Association.