Most wealth management teams are built to perform. Justin Nelson builds his to last.
The distinction matters more than it might appear. Justin Nelson is the Managing Director and Head of the Asset Management and Financial Principals Coverage Team for J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Connecticut, overseeing a 20-person team that manages more than $15 billion in client assets. When he talks about how he staffs and develops that team, he isn’t describing a roster assembled for this quarter’s numbers. He’s describing something much harder to build and much harder to replace.
That mindset sits against a challenging industry backdrop. According to a 2025 report from Cerulli Associates, more than 100,000 financial advisors plan to retire over the next decade, representing roughly 37% of industry headcount and 41% of total assets under management. McKinsey has separately projected a shortage of approximately 100,000 advisors by 2034. The pipeline problem is real, and firms that haven’t built internal depth are already feeling it.
Hiring for Character, Not Credentials
Nelson’s approach to staffing starts before the interview. He isn’t screening for a particular degree or academic background. What he’s looking for is harder to spot on a resume.
“I couldn’t care less what your major is,” he says. “I’m just looking for the right fit and a strong interest in finance. You could be a poetry major. But you need to be driven and demonstrate why you want to be in this business”
What he tests for is emotional intelligence: the capacity to read people, hold difficult conversations, and operate with genuine care for clients. In private banking, where relationships can span 20 or 30 years and often extend across generations of a family, Nelson has found that technical training is teachable. The willingness to truly serve people is something different.
“I think that having insight into how people think and emotional connection is so important in finance,” he says.
Psychology, he adds, is the major he sees most often among candidates who stand out. That observation tracks with where the broader hiring market has been moving. A 2025 survey cited by HR Dive found that 78% of employers had hired someone with strong technical skills who didn’t work out because of soft skill or cultural fit issues. Among those same employers, 60% said interpersonal skills are more important today than they were five years ago.
Building for What Comes Next
Nelson is deliberate about how he develops the people already on his team, not just who he adds to it. He speaks about feedback and transparency as non-negotiables. His team gives him criticism as readily as he gives it to them. That pattern, he argues, is what keeps a team from stagnating.
“We have a very open, transparent relationship,” he says. “We give each other feedback, positive or criticism.”
The payoff extends well beyond daily operations. By investing in his team’s capabilities year after year, Nelson is creating the conditions for a clean handoff when the time comes. The industry has proven poor at this systematically. A J.D. Power study published in 2025 found that 44% of financial advisors do not have a formal succession plan. Among those planning to retire within five years, 30% still had no plan in place.
Nelson isn’t building toward that outcome. Developing a team that can outlast any one person requires daily intention, not a last-minute scramble.
“Picking and choosing those right people who work well with me helps me continue to build my business over time,” he says. “Not just looking at what I do today, but knowing that whenever I’m not doing this anymore, there’s a great group of people here who can step in.”
For Justin Nelson, that continuity is the real measure of what his team has built together. Assets can be transferred. The relationships and institutional knowledge woven into a well-developed team are harder to move, and when done right, they don’t need to be.
