RBC, Raymond James, LPL, plus annuity growth, Black wealth podcast, ESG guidance and more

October 29, 2021 2:30 PM

RBC and Raymond James were among the firms to land advisors this week. Ballentine Partners is launching a podcast on Black wealth. An advisor with 44 disclosures is facing fraud charges. Scroll through to find what you might have missed this week in financial planning news.

The move from Prudential would expand PGIM's capabilities beyond mutual funds and target-date funds.

Prudential Financial’s asset management business, PGIM, has acquired Green Harvest Asset Management, a firm that employs direct indexing to build separately managed account strategies for high net worth investors.

Like other asset managers who have snapped up direct indexing capabilities

, PGIM sees an opportunity to improve after-tax incomes for investors in an era of all-time market highs and tax increases on the horizon. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and PGIM expects the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Ballentine Partners, the No. 31 firm on Financial Planning’s 2021 RIA Leaders rankings of the largest fee-only planning companies, has launched

a new podcast

called the “Ballentine Broadcast: Conversations on Black Wealth.” Host Akeiva Ellis, a financial education specialist with Waltham, Massachusetts-based Ballentine and a winner of

FP’s Rising Stars Award

, will speak with Black business owners and wealthy individuals about their paths to success, experiences working with financial services professionals and their thoughts on closing the racial wealth gap. “Our goal with this podcast is to amplify Black voices, learn how to better serve the Black high net worth community as financial professionals and help change the narrative when it comes to building and sustaining multi-generational Black wealth,” Ellis said in an email. “We believe this podcast is revolutionary, as the intersection of wealthy Black clients and the financial services industry is one with much to be explored from this lens.”

Financial advisor David Winchell, a 25-year industry veteran who had previously been with wirehouses and other banks throughout his career, left UBS to launch Winchell Financial Group with LPL Financial and its Strategic Wealth Services channel. The Las Vegas-based practice managed $265 million in client assets with its prior firm. Angie Tomassetti-Ferrin is the client service and operations manager of the newly independent practice, Winchell Financial Group, which uses LPL’s channel offering ex-wirehouse teams independence with a larger suite of services than its traditional model. “I found a growing disconnect between how other firms are set up and my promise to deliver custom, independent personal wealth management advice and service to my clients,” Winchell said in a statement. “It was important for me to partner with a firm where I have more choices and can provide objective advice in a platform where there are no proprietary products or internal competition divisions.”

Carson Wealth Management Group building, CWM, provided by Carson Group.

Former Securities America and Advisor Group recruiting executive Gregg Johnson has joined Carson Group as the hybrid RIA and office of supervisory jurisdiction’s national sales director. Johnson will lead Carson’s business development strategy. With Securities America, Johnson created an M&A division that acquired 10 broker-dealers over roughly 15 years. Later, after Advisor Group acquired Securities America's prior parent firm, Ladenburg Thalmann, Johnson led a recruiting team that brought in $14 billion in new assets in his only full year in his previous role. He left the firm earlier this year. "I am extremely excited to join Carson Group,” Johnson said in a statement. “Being in Omaha, I've had a front row seat watching their growth, and I've always been impressed by their focus on their advisor partners and stakeholders.”

Lexington Wealth Management, a Hightower-owned RIA, will reach $1.9 billion in client assets upon the expected close in the fourth quarter of the practice’s acquisition of Freed Investment Group. The incoming Boston-based practice led by advisors Kenneth Freed and Dennis Encarnation has $264 million in client assets as a fully independent RIA. Lexington is named after the nearby suburb where it has its headquarters, and the deal marks its second of the year after the previous acquisition of another Massachusetts-based practice. “When looking for the right partner, we considered several different high-caliber firms and chose Lexington because of its strong culture and team as well as our shared belief that clients need not only financial guidance, but also emotional support to help them navigate important life events and plan for the future,” Freed said in a statement. At the end of the third quarter, the private equity-backed RIA consolidator, Hightower, had $104.1 billion in assets under management.

Financial advisors can get

a free guide

to adapting ESG investment criteria, courtesy of US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. “Incorporating Sustainable Investing Into Your Practice: A Roadmap For Financial Advisors 2021” takes advisors through six steps: identifying products, discussing ESG with clients, investment policy statements, asset allocation, tracking impact and displaying expertise. The organization, which is backed by a nonprofit foundation, has a mission of advancing sustainable investment. “The growing urgency of the climate crisis, movement for racial justice and continued reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic have put ESG issues at the top of many investors’ agendas,” US SIF CEO Lisa Woll said in a statement. “As a result, financial advisors have an enormous business opportunity if they can introduce clients to sustainable investing options and follow up when clients express interest.”

U.S. annuity sales jumped 12% year-over-year in the third quarter to $62.2 billion, adding to the previous two quarters to generate the highest volume of annuity sales over the first nine months of the year since 2008, according to preliminary estimates from the LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute. “The surge of the Delta variant pulled overall sales down from second quarter results but continued equity market gains and low volatility propelled double-digit growth in both traditional variable annuity and registered index-linked annuity sales, resulting in strong year-over-year results,” Todd Giesing, the assistant vice president of SRI Annuity Research, said in a statement. In particular, the traditional VA products “have outperformed expectations this year, driven by the increase of investment-focused VA sales and fee-based annuities, which were fueled by an increased appetite for tax deferral solutions,” Giesing added.

Former Triad Advisors CEO and veteran executive Chet Payne was the first employee of Arkadios Capital, an independent broker-dealer that one of the largest teams left Triad to launch in 2016. Arkadios has now appointed him its president. Arkadios spans 80 advisors with more than $5 billion in client assets. “Chet’s unique skill set, stemming from his experience as a former regulator and as a seasoned CCO and COO in the independent broker-dealer channel, positions him to be an effective leader for the firm,” Arkadios founder David Millican said in a statement. “He will facilitate our growing footprint in the IBD channel while continuing to provide first-class support to our existing affiliated advisors.”

A barred former financial advisor with Raymond James Financial Services and Edward Jones named Michael F. Shillin of Shillin Wealth Management faces 10 counts of fraud charges after federal prosecutors in Wisconsin said he made misrepresentations to clients as part of a scheme. The 31-year-old from Eau Claire sold insurance policies through false information about their cost and benefits, as well as his commission, according to investigators. In addition, he created fraudulent tax documents to make them appear eligible for certain tax breaks, obtained bank loans of $462,000 with false collateral and told clients he had purchased non-public stock in private firms when he had not done so, federal prosecutors said. A grand jury in Madison indicted Shillin on Oct. 27. In only nine years of formal

registration

on FINRA BrokerCheck, Shillin amassed 44 disclosures.

Raymond James scored two wirehouse breakaway teams to its employee advisor channel from Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch. In one of the moves, financial advisor Jeff Little left Wells Fargo to launch JL Wealth Management of Raymond James after joining Raymond James & Associates. The Gadsden, Alabama-based practice managed $156 million in client assets with its prior firm and Little has more than 30 years of financial services experience with a prior tenure at Merrill Lynch before moving to Wells Fargo in 2008. “Raymond James offers our clients the unique resources and capabilities to build a personal financial plan and strategy to meet their goals and objectives in today’s world,” Little said in a statement. In the other move, advisors Gus Fingado and Matthew Walter, along with senior client relationship associate Janet Mauro, dropped Merrill Lynch for Raymond James & Associates and formed Fingado Walter Wealth Management of Raymond James. The Manalapan, New Jersey-based team managed $216 million in client assets with its prior firm. “Raymond James is laser focused on putting clients’ interests first and offers industry-leading technology that allows us to concentrate our time on doing what we do best: serving the financial needs of our clients,” Fingado said in a statement. Across its employee and independent channels, Raymond James has about 8,500 financial advisors.

Merrill Lynch lost a Minneapolis-area team to RBC Wealth Management named The Johnson Group, which had managed $565 million in client assets with its prior firm. Managing Director Mark Johnson leads a Wayzata, Minnesota-based team that includes advisors Bart McNabb and Adam Johnson, along with client support staff members Carrie Orvik and Julie Perrella. “RBC Wealth Management has a strong reputation of financial stability and focus on putting the needs of clients first,” Mark Johnson said in a statement. “We believe we will be able to continue providing our clients with all the products and offerings of a large, global institution but with a small-firm culture.”

Advisors, wealth management professionals and any investors using corporate and municipal bonds gained access to much more ESG criteria relating to the products, thanks to some additional information made available by CUSIP Global Services. Alongside the offering documents made available through each bond’s CUSIP number, issuers and investors can now see whether they’re labeled with an ESG tag denoting whether they’re “green, social or sustainability oriented.” The total issuance for bonds including ESG criteria reached $500 billion in the first half of the year, according to Scott Preiss, the global head of CUSIP. "By clearly tagging ESG bonds in the pre-market environment — and providing granularity on the specific type of ESG bond being issued — we are making it possible to seamlessly track these securities throughout the financial system using our universally recognized, industry standard taxonomy,” Preiss said in a statement.

Wealthtech collective TIFIN has closed $47 million in new capital led from Hamilton Lane, which joins JPMorgan, Morningstar and Broadridge as investors. It’s the third closed round of fundraising for the startup in 12 months and values the company at $447 million — nearly five times higher than its Series A round at the end of 2020.

Envestnet has a new strategic partnership to distribute YieldX’s fixed income technology and products through the Envestnet platform. The partnership also includes an $18 million round of Series A investment from Envestnet, which YieldX will use to grow its quant, engineering and analytics teams.