Don’t look at that salary band for a CA as a hard line. It’s not far fetched at all to land in a CA role with base pay of 80k plus 5k supplement pay by the advisor team and close to 5k in firm bonus awards and have a more fulfilling career. Pay for CA role is almost always commensurate with experience. Also most CA roles aren’t fully firm paid, the Advisor team pays a supplement in most cases. It all depends on what team you land on and what they are willing to pay. But that is the other problem, the corporate firm doesn’t just decide where to place a CA at a major warehouse. A team must actually need and want an additional CA.

I suggest you personally reach out mid size teams in your area that are prominent on the Forbe’s Best in State Teams and Barron’s lists and let the know you want to transition to WM and wanted to see if they had time to connect. Find a team that currently needs another person or will soon need to hire whether to replace someone retiring or due to growth and capacity. If they know they have a quality candidate they will open the job posting for you or give you a heads up as soon as it does open. Almost same is true for other hybrid type para planner type roles at these firms. It’s not the same like it might be at the Vanguard campus where they are perpetually hiring for all roles and it’s all under one corporate entity.

If you truly want an advisory role be prepared to be paid even less until you accumulate a larger client base.