$2.2 trillion wealth manager Merrill Lynch is pausing new hires for a 3,000-plus person financial adviser training program that's its main talent pipeline

• Merrill Lynch Wealth Management is pausing interviews for its financial adviser trainee program, Andy Sieg, the unit's president, told Business Insider on Wednesday.
• 3,000 to 3,500 people participate in the financial adviser development program at a given time. The rigorous multi-year program is a key talent pipeline.
• The unit is still hiring trainees into full-time financial adviser positions, and is moving forward with offers to some new trainee hires after interviews in January and February, a spokesperson said.
• Visit BI Prime for more wealth management stories.

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, among the largest US wealth managers, is pausing interviews for its financial adviser training program as the coronavirus pandemic throws hiring and business plans into disarray across industries.

"We're not in a position to hire individuals into this program in the way and at the pace that we have without the ability to conduct face-to-face interviews, for example. We're trying to be practical," president Andy Sieg told Business Insider on Wednesday after parent company Bank of America reported first-quarter earnings results.

The firm is still offering trainee positions to successful candidates that interviewed in January and February, a company spokesperson said. It will also continue to hire trainees into full-time financial advisor positions.

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At any given time, 3,000 to 3,5000 people participate in the financial adviser development program, a rigorous, 3 ½-year-long rolling program the firm has run for more than 70 years.

It's critical for maintaining a healthy pipeline of talent, especially as Merrill and rival wealth managers like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and UBS have renewed their focuses on bringing up new talent in a rapidly aging industry. Merrill has focused in recent years on training newcomers internally rather than hiring experienced, outside advisers.

The spokesperson declined to comment on how many adviser trainees are typically hired during the year, and or how many candidate interviews are being put on hold. For now, the firm's pause in hiring outside candidates for the program is open-ended.

"We're going to need some normalization of the operating environment to get that part of the program restarted," Sieg said.

"We do have offers that were extended previously for individuals who are joining us in the month of April, so we will see people joining the team and joining our training program this month," he added. "But our other new hire activities will be paused."

In March, the unit also told adviser trainees that "normal production-related performance management actions," like warnings on falling below performance goals, would be suspended through May, a spokesperson said.

Performance measures for trainees, who are heavily coached and monitored throughout the course of their programs, have not changed permanently.

Merrill has implemented other adjustments as Bank of America's wealth operations work fully remotely.

Bank of America said earlier this month that it would shift around some 3,000 employees, roughly 700 of whom are financial advisers-in-training within Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, over to positions intended to field an onslaught of calls from customers in the consumer and small business segments, Business Insider first reported.

"We fully expect they will be back and focused on their development path to becoming Merrill advisers over the medium-term," Sieg said Wednesday, referring to the temporarily reassigned employees.

He added: "We're trying to come through this with the full set of our trainees in their seats and moving forward and continuing to develop despite the fact that we're in a very different time than we could have imagined."

On Wednesday, Merrill reported $2.2 trillion in client assets, a 7% drop from a year earlier, which it attributed to positive flows offset by the plunging stock market. The unit reported 17,646 financial advisers through the end of the first quarter, which includes Merrill advisers and other employees like those working on its Merrill Edge platform.

It's parent company Bank of America, the second-largest US bank by customer assets, reported a 45% drop in first-quarter profits as it set aside $3.6 billion in new reserves for expected loan losses.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm, the first to open up its small business loan portal under the federal government's plan, has come under fire in recent weeks for its coronavirus response, we previously reported.

"The focus of our management team in this kind of environment needed to very strongly turn to supporting our existing teammates, and making sure that they're healthy and safe, first and foremost," Sieg said on Wednesday.