Wirehouse Breakaways, Outsourcing, Investment Platforms And Custodians

Pondering Reasons For Wirehouse Exits, Outsourcing To Achieve Scale, Accessing Structured Notes, Changing Custodians And Recruiting News

To My Fellow WSR Community Members:

For a publication that primarily covers activity in the independent wealth management space, in addition to the many advisors at RIAs and broker-dealers who follow our work, a considerable portion of the Wealth Solutions Report community consists of wirehouse professionals.

I am honored that we reach such a wide audience, and have long wondered what exactly those at wirehouses find most interesting about our coverage. I believe that, on some level, wirehouse advisors must want to learn about the independent channels in order to evaluate whether they should finally break away themselves.

Those who make the leap might do so for any number of reasons. Perhaps you’re tied down to a corporate vision or mission, stuck with selling corporate quotas, have no ownership over your book of business, given the illusion of independent freedom but ultimately must adhere to the corporate way, your career growth and options are limited, or your pay structure can be erratic.

If any of that feels accurate, I encourage such wirehouse professionals to click the link on our email blast from our sponsored content program partner Commonwealth Financial Network, which explores these points.

This week, we bring you our Weekly Recruitment Roundup, a Q&A on how financial advisors can harness the power of outsourcing to achieve growth through scale and conduct investment management, coverage of a new fintech partnership that enables RIAs to customize structured note portfolios for their clients, an RIA launching a third-party investment platform for other advisory firms as well as another firm changing its custodian ahead of a historically large accounts conversion.

This Week’s Issue

Here’s what we have for you this week:

• Which rebranded firm also conducted major M&A? This edition of the Weekly Recruitment Roundup features Avantax ending Q2 2023 with a new record in advisory assets as a percentage of client assets, LPL Financial adding Veritas Legacy Wealth and Wood Wealth Management, Rothschild Investment and Sentinus merging, CI Financial revealing the acquisition of three RIAs with a combined $14.2 billion in assets, CG Advisor Network leaving the Schwab custodial platform for Axos Advisor Services, Cerity Partners hiring former KPMG tax executive Jeffrey LeSage and Cresset Capital naming the new head of its private credit program.

• How can advisors harness the power of outsourcing? We spoke with Verne Marble, Director of Business Development at Morristown, New Jersey-based Private Advisor Group, about how outsourcing can help advisors achieve growth through scale and conduct investment management, with minimal client disruption. “Certain administrative duties can be easily outsourced, so that staff can dedicate more focus to client service,” he says. “Advisors aren’t only looking to save money and time. They want to create value for their practices and for their current and future clients.”

• What’s the latest advancement in structured notes? A new partnership between Chicago-based fintech firms GeoWealth and Halo Investing enables GeoWealth to provide customizable structured note portfolios as a component of a Unified Managed Account (UMA). Halo’s structured notes tool enables RIAs to deploy and manage structured note exposure to client portfolios and model programs. GeoWealth’s proprietary sub-accounting software also will allow RIAs that use structured notes in UMAs to view, report and bill at the individual sleeve level.

In case you missed it, last week we brought you these stories:

• How is one RIA serving other advisory firms? Stamford, Connecticut-based NewEdge Wealth launched a third-party investment platform to provide financial professionals and institutions with access to the same strategies that the RIA uses with its own clients. These encompass ultra-high net worth families, family offices, foundations, endowments, trusts, estates and other entities. The new platform, called NewEdge Investment Solutions, offers strategies including investing in structured notes and developing managed investment strategies that use them.

• What prompts a firm to change custodians? Nearly four months after choosing LPL Financial as its primary custodian and exclusive broker-dealer, Haslett, Michigan-based CG Advisor Network announced that it is leaving Schwab Advisor Services for Axos Advisor Services to serve as custodian for its high net worth clients. CG Advisor Network had custodied with TD Ameritrade for decades, and continued to maintain accounts at Schwab Advisor Services after Schwab completed its acquisition of TD Ameritrade in October 2020. The move to Axos Advisor Services comes less than a month before Schwab aims to migrate TD Ameritrade custodial accounts to its own platform.

• Who’s our newest Wealthtech Leader of the Month? In Digital Domain, we spoke with StratiFi Co-Founder and CEO Akhil Lodha. Other entries included the launch of SKYVIEW 1’s mobile banking platform for advisors to offer to their clients, Docupace subsidiary PreciseFP integrating with LPL Financial, Mirador revitalizing its compensation management services, LaSalle St. adding a concierge service to its Technology Learning Center for advisors, Ledgex launching a private investment document retrieval service, FusionIQ integrating with Blueleaf, Entrustody appointing Brian Kutmas as Senior Vice President of Product and Technology, CapIntel launching SEC-aligned proposal building features for RIAs and COMPLY publishing its 2023 Regulation Rundown.

Share your ideas, thoughts and questions with us. We enjoy hearing from you!

Let your friends and colleagues know about the insights and news we can bring them via email and LinkedIn.

Cheers!

Larry Roth
CEO
Wealth Solutions Report