Top Four Wealth Management Associate Interview Questions

Unlike other areas of finance, titles within the wealth management industry aren't overly standardized. So what's meant by a wealth management associate, and who is eligible to apply to the role, can have quite a bit of variability.

Generally speaking, wealth management associate roles will be reserved for people who have had at least a few years of work experience in a role outside of wealth management. However, you'll note that some wealth management associate applications will be open to anyone who is graduating with a graduate degree or has at least a few years of work experience (in other words, anyone can apply as long as they haven't just graduated from undergrad in the past year or so). 

Fortunately, despite the variability when it comes to how wealth management associate roles are defined, the interview process isn't nearly as variable. This is because what almost everyone applying to a wealth management associate role will have in common is that they haven't worked previously in wealth management.

With that said, the more experience an individual has when applying to an associate role, the more the interviewer will focus on having them explain their experience, why they believe they're a good fit for wealth management, how they'd talk to clients, etc. This is because more experienced individuals will be expected to be "client-facing" sooner and generally be expected to be more prepared to hit the ground running.

Wealth Management Associate Interview Questions

Below are some of the interview questions you could expect when applying to a wealth management associate role. As always, what interviewers are looking for are nuanced answers that show an interest in markets while also demonstrating a general understanding of the role of a wealth manager. 

If the Fed were to pivot and become dovish, what would that do to equities?

What is the Fed's mandate and is it contradictory in today's economic environment?

How can you insulate a client from inflation?

How has corporate credit done so far this year?

If the Fed were to pivot and become dovish, what would that do to equities?

This is a bit of an interconnected question. What your interviewer is looking for is that you understand what is meant by "pivot" in this context, what would need to be true for this pivot to occur, and then how equities would react.

What we mean by the Fed pivoting is the Fed explicitly signalling that they're going to pause the rate hike cycle, or perhaps even explicitly signalling that rate cuts could occur in the future if economic conditions deteriorate any further. 

While the Fed has had somewhat muddled messaging over the past year, they've been explicitly clear that they'll only look to pause the rate hike cycle if they see a persistent drop in inflation that is consistent with getting back to two percent inflation.

As a result, when the Fed actually pivots and becomes more dovish the backdrop must be inflation that is falling persistently and in such a way that's consistent with getting back down to two percent inflation.

This should - all else being equal - be very positive for equities. Indeed, the run up in equities through July of 2022 was due to the market's (perhaps premature) belief that inflation had not only peaked, but was going to quickly fall (thereby allowing the Fed to pause the hike cycle at the end of 2022). In fact, the market was already pricing in a rate cut in Q1 of 2023 (although based on the July employment report that seems entirely premature and will likely change). 

So it's safe to say that if the Fed were to explicitly pivot you'd expect equities to rally. The only caveat to this would be that if the Fed pivoted because inflation was coming down sharply due to a rapidly deteriorating economic situation. In this case, you could imagine even the benefit of the pivot not being enough to boost equities higher.

What is the Fed's mandate and is it contradictory in today's economic environment?

The Fed has a dual-pronged mandate of full employment and price stability. Price stability has classically been defined as two percent inflation on average (although the Fed did, perhaps to their own determinant, try to introduce a more flexible inflation target that was vaguely-worded and poorly understood by market participants).

In today's economic environment there's no doubt that the Fed's mandate is somewhat contradictory. This is because it's unequivocally clear - even if the Fed doesn't want to explicitly say it - that in order to get inflation back down to two percent it will require the unemployment rate going up from its currently very low levels.

Indeed, most economists agree - some begrudgingly - that the only way to expeditiously create the demand destruction necessary to cool inflationary pressures (especially those coming from wage price increases, as those tend to be sticky and directly lead into higher future inflation) is by raising the unemployment rate. 

So while the Fed has certainly hit one part of its mandate (full employment) it is sorely missing the other part (price stability). As a result, you'd expect to see unemployment tick up - hopefully not too much - in order to achieve price stability around two percent inflation moving forward. 

How can you insulate a client from inflation?

With inflation at its highest level in four decades - not only in the US, but across most of the developed world - clients are increasingly asking about solutions that can insulate them from inflationary pressures. 

An obvious solution are TIPS given that they're indexed to CPI. Thus, by definition, they insulate a holder from inflation (although they provide an incredibly modest return in excess of inflation). Beyond that, historically real assets and commodity-linked equities tend to do well during inflationary periods. 

However, the broader point you should make when you're asked this question - after giving a few concrete answers as shown above - is that you can never fully insulate a client from inflationary pressures. There's always some level of risk involved in any positioning -- including the risk of missing out on large equity gains if there's a sudden decline in inflation or a sudden central bank pivot.  

How has corporate credit done so far this year?

Remember that corporate credit yields (i.e., the yield on any corporate bond or loan) can be thought of as the prevailing risk free (treasury) rate with an added credit spread. Since the beginning of the year not only have treasury yields risen, but corporate spreads have widened (gone up) as well. This has combined to cause a remarkable move in yields for corporate credit.

So given that when yields go up, prices go down, as you can imagine investment grade and high yield indices have performed quite poorly for most of the year. In fact, for some periods of early-2022 corporate credit performed worse than equities. This is obviously quite an abnormal situation as debt is generally much less volatile than equity.

With that said, some have viewed this as the perfect time to jump into the corporate credit market as many investment grade and high yield bonds and loans are trading at a steep discount (given how much their yields have risen). 

Conclusion

In the end, wealth management associate interviews traverse a similar format to any other wealth management interview. The primary difference will be that your interviewer will expect that your answers are slightly more nuanced and in-depth.

However, it's important to remember - as I talk about in the wealth management guide - that wealth management interviews tend to be a mile wide and an inch deep (as opposed to a mile deep and an inch wide). This reflects the reality of the job as a wealth manager where you'll need to be wearing many different hats. 

While we haven't covered some of the other types of questions you can be asked - such as behavioral and technical - I put out an even longer post on wealth management interview questions you can read when you have time. There's also a list of asset management interview questions as well. Finally, there's also the wealth management guide where I go over all the most common questions and how to think about structuring your answers to them.