By Amey Stone

Capital Group, the $3.4 trillion asset manager, is putting big bucks behind an effort to improve its relationships with financial advisors. It plans to spend about $70 million a year to add 130 new employees to its advisor-facing organization, increasing the sales and support staff from 470 to 600.

Positions to be added include wealth management consultants, who meet regularly with advisors, and experts in areas of financial planning, like estate planning, whom advisors can call on as needed. The consultants, known in the industry as wholesalers, are sales professionals who provide portfolio consultations as well as advice on practice management.

"At Capital Group, we have a deeply ingrained belief in the value of advice" and want to be a leader in supporting financial advisors, says Matt O'Connor, CEO of the company's client group. "The wealth channel is the core of our business model." The company estimates that about 75% of U.S. advisors have assets managed by Capital Group or American Funds (a brand of actively managed mutual funds that is part of Capital Group) in their client portfolios.

In addition to hiring, the new investment will go to expand client centers in New York and Los Angeles, says O'Connor. Last week the company announced it plans to purchase its Los Angeles headquarters.

With the increased personnel, O'Connor says he hopes the consultants can increase from one in-person meeting a year with an advisor to three, for example. "We believe more interaction is better, and we want to make sure we're staffed to do that."

Advisors are being asked to do more for their clients -- "everything and anything," he says -- and he thinks Capital Group can be a leader in providing additional support. "We're focused on delivering two primary services to our advisors -- solutions that can provide superior investment results over the long term and true business partnership," he says.

Since inception, Capital Group says that 84% of its equity and multi-asset strategies and 74% of its fixed-income strategies have beaten their benchmarks net of fees.

O'Connor emphasized that in an era of AI, this expansion is human-focused. "We want to build relationships the same way advisors do, " O'Connor says, "by building trust."

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 01, 2026 08:08 ET (12:08 GMT)

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