It absolutely IS bad, no doubt about it. Every year things have gotten worse and worse. But from a numbers standpoint, have we lost any major clients or even mid sized clients? Or are we just doing well since the market is up and most of our fees are asset-based? I moved out of a finance role years ago so I’m really not close to the numbers as I used to be but would anyone closer have more insight?
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We did lose some BIG names last year, and nearly lost some more, retained more or less "on probation". Asset Owners management is shook, you can tell there's fear, and heads rolled as a punishment.
Why would a client not leave?
- Inertia - it is living in a old house or using an aged phone. Yeah the new phone or remodeling the house is time-consuming and expensive
- As business entity, one has to train the staff - new processes and terminologies. Meanwhile the current business has to run. It is an investment - what would you as the business leader do that. Stay and hope BNY improves.
- There is no incentive to incur the cost for the incremental benefits which may not justify the investment, especially for RIA .. There are no earth-shattering features offered by the other firms either.
- Big firms have clauses in their contracts that gives them rebates when BNY does not keep up its SLAs -
As a bean counter, the business is running in a cost-controlled manner. As for as client service goes the service is primarily for IRAs and distributions. For Wealth Management and new HNW accounts, the business goes elsewhere .. We do not have total control over RIAs
As existing accounts move the AUM will go down but then the rising market bloats the valuation and AUM value keeps growing. It is that illusion and the associated revenue on inflated AUM.
It will take years for the clients to move. And deconversion is very disruptive for the clients - they need a good reason to jump. That is one reason why we also do not see new BIG clients.
How Robin treats his employees is not a good reason. It is like we are stuck with Microsoft or Google or Apple - we do not have many choices. All are the same only logos differ
Clients have left recently but they dont know all the sh-t happening here or behind the scenes. Nobody in their right mind would deal with bny if they knew how bad these systems were or why their stuff was ways off because of incompetence
OP here. A few years ago NAV errors were pretty common. We had to waive fees for upset clients. Since we gutted operations so badly, I can only see things getting worse. We lost wisdom tree as a client years ago because of ops errors so it’s shocking they are back.
@dr You are correct in saying this as my husband works for an RIA and says how horrible Pershing is.
In general, no one should do business with BNY as they poorly mistreat their employees through small, consistent layoffs to avoid WARN notices and create made up PIPs while the CEO is only concerned about his ELT members and the stock price. The marketing team should do a bettet job of showcasing the truth on LinkedIn which is how unhappy thousands of US and EMEA employees are.
Laziness…
@OP Here are some stats that may tell a story:
Pershing (BNY Mellon) Q3 2025 Net New Assets
+$3 billion (Pershing U.S. platform)
Schwab – Advisor/RIA Custody Q3 2025 Net New Assets
~$82 billion of Schwab’s overall $137.5 B of NNA
Pershing custody and clearing clients absolutely hate BNY. Most have contracts that prohibit them from completely leaving, but when given an opportunity to take business to GS or Schwab they gladly take it. Pershing is known as the “ Walmart “ for RIA’s and independent broker dealers. Senior management and the EC know this, but could care less.
It's because the market is doing well and when you are raising assets and growing the last thing you want to deal with is changing service providers. You have to dedicate resources and manage a conversion and it could impact your operations etc. And theres no reason to do that to save a basis point or two on back office services fees.
You don't have to outrun the bear. You just need to be the 2nd slowest.
That and transaction costs for switching custodians.
From what I’ve seen and heard a lot them use the same playbook as BNY. Laying people off, RTO, long hours, offshoring. Birds of a feather flock together. Or monkey see monkey do. Take your pick.
As stated. It's a hassle to change providers. Some clients have left BNY during 2025. Depends on contracts and willingness to change business partners.
Unfortunately, most people don’t stop doing business with a company just because they’re unethical or not treating people properly
I’ve wanted to switch my bank for a few years to a much smaller community bank or credit union but haven’t cause it’s such a freaking hassle to change all of your automatic deductions deposits payment, etc.
Not a good excuse or a reason, but it’s true
Hopefully karma will catch up to BNY and other horrible corporations