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Raymond James’ aversion to cross-selling is a boon in the firm’s recruiting efforts to woo advisors, according to the head of the firm’s private client group.

In a discussion at Wealth Management’s New York offices, Raymond James Private Client Group President Tash Elwyn echoed Chief Executive Officer Paul Shoukry’s distaste for mandated cross-selling, as he expressed this week.

During the firm’s institutional investor conference in Orlando, Fla., Shoukry said the firm has “zero cross-selling requirements,” arguing that while that “sounds like common sense, that’s actually pretty unique in the wealth management space.”

According to Elwyn, Raymond James has been told by recruiting prospects that advisors in their previous businesses were urged to focus ‘on delivering the whole firm.’

“And when they hear statements like delivering the whole firm, they know it’s about cross-selling. They know it’s about driving profitability for those firms,” Elwyn said. “And what really frustrates those advisors is, where’s the client in that equation and conversation?”

In a question about the difference between cross-selling and collaboration between advisors and divisions at the firm during this week’s conference, Shoukry said Raymond James makes “it almost more difficult for our asset management products … to be sold internally to our own wealth management clients,” saying the firm takes “that separation very seriously.”

Though Raymond James recently purchased large asset managers, such as the $46 billion Clark Capital Management (presumably in part for their investment solutions), Elwyn stressed that the firm has “checks and balances” to ensure that the availability of products doesn’t mean there’s a requirement for advisors to push them.

“We’re really selective and really protective from a cultural standpoint about who becomes part of the Raymond James family because we want to make sure we have that alignment,” he said.

Elwyn leads the firm’s domestic wealth business, with 9,000 employees generating more than 70% of the firm’s revenue, and previously served as president and CEO of Raymond James & Associates, the firm’s employee-advisor channel.

According to Elwyn, the firm continued to see momentum after record recruiting in its 2025 fiscal year, having also drastically boosted its recruiting- and retention-related compensation for the first quarter of FY 2026. 

During its last earnings report, the firm broke out the recruiting and retention spread, showing a 22% quarter-over-quarter increase to $107 million. According to Wolfe Research, in 2025, Raymond James was second only to LPL, with 313 net new advisors, beating Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley.

One recent boost to recruiting is the LPL/Commonwealth acquisition, with Raymond James emerging as an early beneficiary after the August 2025 announcement by adding several teams. The firm has continued to pick up advisors in the march toward Commonwealth’s integration into LPL, scheduled to be done by this year’s fourth quarter.

Elwyn acknowledged that recruiting opportunities hinge on various factors, including mergers and acquisitions within the industry, firm failures and changes in competitors’ advisor compensation. While he didn’t speak to the LPL/Commonwealth deal directly, Elwyn stressed that those macro events could “have a much longer tail than you may imagine.”

“While there’s potentially immediate movement by advisors that are very decisive around what platform and capabilities and cultural fit is going to be right for them … there are many more advisors who are at different stages of their diligence, and not everyone moves at the same pace,” Elwyn said.

Elwyn also cited the firm’s plans to invest $1.1 billion in technology over the next year. The spend will include the recently announced proprietary artificial intelligence agent for advisors, Rai. The agent is a generative AI chatbot, and is currently in development with a plan for “an enterprise-wide roll out” in the next few quarters.