While major brokerages are focused on pursuing and retaining top-tier financial advisers, Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) is snagging the ones left behind - those who work right in its "sweet spot."

Ameriprise's Advisors Group, which includes both employee and independent advisers, has recruited more than 500 brokers so far in 2009, many of whom joined from larger peers such as Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

Ameriprise mostly targets mass affluent clients, those who have between $100,000 and $1 million in investable assets. Typically, major firms, known as wirehouses, also attract these investors, but are shifting toward servicing the richest of the rich.

The four major firms are still molding together big brokerage forces acquired during the financial crisis. Such integrations as well as plunging equity markets earlier this year, led these firms to shed advisers in their lower-producing brackets. Ameriprise is one place these advisers are finding a home.

The Minneapolis firm, which boats roughly 12,500 advisers, completed its acquisition of H&R Block Inc.'s (HRB) advisory business in November and has plans to further build up its brokerage force.

"We are in an industry where dislocation will be remembered forever," said Don Froude, president of Ameriprise's Personal Advisors Group. "In terms of recruiting, this is probably the best year we have ever had."

"We are recruiting advisors who work within our sweet spot, which are the affluent and mass affluent markets," Froude said.

That expansion began in 2008, when larger competitors were teetering and losing clients' confidence. According to a July report from research firm Aite Group, self-clearing retail brokerage firms outside the wirehouses added 3,000 advisers last year alone. Edward Jones topped that list, adding more than 50% of these brokers, while Ameriprise hired 18%.

"The wirehouses have too many brokers right now. They want to lock in certain brokers, but others they don't want," said Alois Pirker, research director at Aite Group.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has 18,500 advisers, while Bank of America Corp.'s (BAC) Merrill Lynch has roughly 15,000. Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) boasts roughly 15,500 and UBS Wealth Management US has about 7,900.

"Firms like Edward Jones and Ameriprise tend to take a lot of the smaller (producing) brokers. For those guys, those firms are a good fit," Pirker said.

The average broker at Ameriprise produces about $270,000 in fees and commissions, while those from H&R Block are slightly higher, with $300,000 in annual production. By comparison, the average wirehouse adviser has between $500,000 and $600,000 in production.

"We know that many of the advisors we have recruited from the wirehouses have already increased their books of business, improved client satisfaction and are developing deeper relationships through financial planning with their clients," Froude said.

Dennis Gallant, president of GDC Research, which does consulting and research for financial-services firms, says although the wirehouses' shift toward high-producers makes places like Ameriprise attractive, he worries about potential side effects for the industry.

"It's not a bad strategy, but if everyone goes affluent the firms will be saturated. But, we're not there yet," he said.

-By Brett Philbin, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2173; brett.philbin@dowjones.com