Can a G2 Advisor Take Clients When Leaving the Team?

The short answer: It depends on what you signed and where your clients are coded. The team agreement usually decides who keeps which households when a team splits. Accounts on a joint rep code carry two names, so expect them to be the hardest to settle, inherited accounts often carry their own non-solicit, and whether both firms are in the Protocol for Broker Recruiting sets what you may take on the way out. Clients always decide for themselves where they go, so the practical question is which ones you may contact. Read every agreement with counsel before you resign.

Teams are now the usual structure. Cerulli reported in December 2025 that just over half of all advisors, 51%, operate in a team structure, while 64% of advisors in the wirehouse and hybrid RIA channels work in multi-advisor teams, the most of any channel. A G2 on one of those teams typically serves households the senior advisor brought in, households the G2 brought in, and a middle group nobody ever sorted. This guide is written for the junior or next-generation advisor thinking about leaving the team, for another firm or for another seat at the same one. The partner-to-partner version of the split is in advisor team splits: who keeps what.

What decides each kind of account?

How are team accounts coded, and why does it matter?

FINRA's Regulatory Notice 22-23, writing about succession plans, describes the joint representative, or joint production, code: a receiving representative may agree in writing with a retiring one to service accounts under a code that is used to calculate the commissions payable to each of them. Its checklist for those agreements asks which accounts will be assigned to joint and which to individual production codes, and the percentage of commissions paid to each representative.

The code is evidence of credit. On a team that pooled everything under one number, it may say little about who brought in or served a household. A securities attorney writing for AdvisorHub in 2015 described disputes in which a team's entire client base sat under the senior advisor's rep code, and wrote that the code a client is assigned to does not by itself decide who owns the relationship. That helps a G2 only where the team agreement and the rest of the record support the claim. Joint-coded accounts carry two names by design, so expect them to be the hardest to settle.

One rule has no exceptions. Notice 22-23 records FINRA disciplinary actions against representatives who altered or falsified the representative codes on trades to receive a higher commission. Never change a code yourself, before or after you decide to leave.

What does the team agreement say, and who decides the split?

The Protocol has its own rule for teams. Where a member of a team or partnership leaves and the entire team does not move together, the terms of the team or partnership agreement govern which clients the departing member may take Client Information for and solicit. The same paragraph sets a floor: no team agreement may be construed or enforced to stop a departing member from taking the information for, or soliciting, the clients he or she introduced to the team.

Where there is no written team agreement on the point, the Protocol supplies a default. A departing member who has been on the team in a producing capacity for four years or more may take the Client Information for all clients the team serviced and solicit them without fear of litigation from the former firm over that information and those solicitations. A member with fewer than four producing years is protected only for the clients he or she introduced. The clock counts years in a producing capacity, so ask counsel how your early years on the team are counted.

Who applies the agreement matters as much as what it says. The same AdvisorHub piece noted that many firm-generated standard teaming agreements give the branch or regional complex manager final authority over dividing client accounts if a team breaks up; he wrote that a firm's standard agreement is geared with the firm's interest in preserving business in mind. Find that clause in yours before anyone at the branch hears you are thinking of leaving.

What about accounts you inherited?

The Protocol sets inherited accounts apart. Where accounts were transferred to a departing advisor under a retirement program that pays the retiring advisor trailing commissions, the departing advisor's ability to take Client Information for those accounts and to solicit them is governed by the contract between the retiring advisor, the departing advisor and the firm.

Those contracts often restrict the successor. Advisors who inherit accounts through UBS's ALFA program sign an agreement not to solicit those clients for a specific period if they leave. When a $1.4 billion team left UBS in 2025 and UBS sued under those agreements, the team agreed to a court order barring it from soliciting its ALFA clients or announcing its new firm to them, while it could still process transfers those clients requested and answer their calls. AdvisorHub reported in 2024 that Merrill's program, like its peers', includes non-solicitation provisions barring inheriting advisors from soliciting the assets to another firm, although a Merrill executive had said in 2019 that the redesigned program would carry no noncompete or nonsolicit agreements; the version you signed is the one that binds you. Edward Jones' Form 10-K for 2025 says successor advisors receive reduced compensation for up to five years and does not describe what applies if a successor leaves, so the successor's own agreement is the place to look. The successor's side of each program is in should a G2 advisor sign a sunset agreement as the successor.

Does the Protocol apply to your move?

The Protocol applies only when both firms are signatories. It then limits what you may take to five items for the clients you serviced (name, address, phone number, email address and account title), delivered with your written resignation, and lets you solicit those clients only after you join the new firm.

Membership changes: Morgan Stanley and UBS both withdrew in late 2017, UBS effective December 1. J.S. Held, the Protocol's administrator, keeps the only official list of signatories and updates it weekly, so check both firms on it close to your date. Where either firm is outside the Protocol, the move runs on your agreements, including the employment, team and any inheritor agreement, and the law, which decide what you may take and whom you may contact.

The Protocol says nothing about notice periods, and it leaves a firm free to enforce whatever contractual, statutory or common law restrictions exist on soliciting clients before an advisor has left, so a notice clause is a question for counsel even between two signatories. The Protocol for Broker Recruiting explained covers the rest of the agreement, and can my firm sue me for leaving covers notice periods, garden leave and non-solicits.

Do the clients have a say?

They have the final one. Notice 22-23 says customers are not bound by the firm's or representatives' succession planning decisions and may move some or all of their assets to another representative or firm. FINRA's Regulatory Notice 19-10 says a firm should answer customers' questions about a departing representative clearly, and that its answers, when a customer asks, may include that the customer may stay with a newly assigned representative, choose a different one or transfer the assets to another firm, and, if the departing representative has consented, reasonable contact information.

What the rules leave to your agreements is how you may reach out. How many clients tend to follow, and why, is in what percentage of clients follow their advisor to a new firm.

Leaving the team and staying at the firm

Staying at the firm turns the split into an internal matter. The Protocol speaks to moves between firms, so an internal split runs on the team agreement and the firm's own process. Notice 22-23 asks firms that permit teams whether they address succession planning among team members, including allocation of responsibilities, timing of departure and compensation sharing, so ask your firm for its written policy. The clients stay at the firm, and each can still ask to be served by a different representative.

What can a G2 do before resigning?

1. Read every agreement you signed. The team agreement, your employment agreement, bonus and deferred-award documents and any inheritor agreement. Note who has final authority over dividing accounts and what the agreement says about clients you introduced.
2. Map your accounts. Which households you introduced, which the team assigned to you, which are joint and which you inherited. Ask the firm how each is coded and keep the answer in writing. Never change a code.
3. Keep only what you are allowed to keep. Regulation S-P limits the disclosure of customers' nonpublic personal information, and Notice 22-23 records a FINRA action against a representative who kept such information after resigning without the firm's or the customers' consent. Under the Protocol, the list is the five items for clients you serviced, delivered with your resignation. Outside it, keep nothing until counsel has read your agreement.
4. See your own counsel before you signal anything. The time to learn what your agreements allow is before anyone at the branch knows you are asking.
5. Time the move. Check both firms' Protocol status close to the date, the length of any notice period, when any inheritor non-solicit ends, and, if there is no written team agreement, how many producing years you have on the team.

What about an RIA team?

On an RIA team, the restriction usually sits in the non-solicit in your employment agreement, and the question is which clients it covers. Kitces.com has published a template that sorts relationships into firm clients, advisor clients and joint clients: clients the firm brought in and passed to you, clients you brought yourself, such as a friend or relative, and a middle group whose treatment the firm and the advisor negotiate.

Which clients you may take is a question for your counsel and your agreements. What a move would mean for you depends on your book of business and the firms on both ends, and the specific answer comes from a conversation: what your practice would command elsewhere, through Winthrop's relationships and record of past deals, and how culture, technology, support and service differ at the firms that fit. The firm pays Winthrop; the advisor never pays. Request an Introduction.