Fidelity Investments, which two years ago unveiled a revamped programme for referring wealthy clients to independent fee-based advisors from its discount-broker network, has cut most of the staff dedicated to the unit,  Investment News said.

Four of the five salespeople charged with introducing registered investment advisors to brokers in Fidelity's 126 branches nationwide were let go as part of the Boston-based mutual fund giant's campaign to cut some 3,000 jobs, or 7 per cent of its payroll.

Scott Dell'Orfano, who oversees the referral programme as executive vice president of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, said the programme continues but is being marketed by the custodial unit's relationship managers as part of a broad suite of services to attract assets from advisors.

The firm pitched the plan to a more select group of advisors than under a previous programme known as Fidelity Advisor Access. To that end, in July 2007, Fidelity expanded the Wealth Advisor Solutions programme to Los Angeles, and New York and its suburbs.

As in rival programmes from Schwab and TD Ameritrade, brokers receive incentives for referrals and also contact referred clients to gauge the quality of service from the RIAs. Advisors, for their part, rebate part of their management fees from referred clients to the custodians — including fees for new assets transferred to the advisors from other financial services providers.

Fidelity has about 115 advisors in its referral program, who have received about $3 billion in client assets from the firm's brokers this year, Mr Dell'Orfano said.

That's up slightly from 2007 but below executives' stated goals when the programme was launched of attracting 200 to 300 high-quality RIAs.

Fidelity officials declined to comment directly on the layoffs.