UBS, Raymond James, Stifel; plus, free crypto education for advisors, female investor outlooks, and scholarships for racial equity

March 4, 2022 9:14 AM

Each week, the Financial Planning team rounds up the news of note in the world of wealth management. Read about advisors changing firms, mergers and acquisitions, as well as stories about:

New scholarship money for a racial equity program.
How female investors are feeling about their financial outlooks.
An independent wealth manager’s Virtual Administration program.
A partnership to offer free crypto education to advisors.

LPL’s Institution Services unit adds ex-Raymond James wealth program

First Hope Wealth Management, the Andover, New Jersey-based wealth program of First Hope Bank, left Raymond James for LPL Financial as its brokerage and the Independent Network of Consultants & Advisors as its office of supervisory jurisdiction. Led by Director of Wealth Management Edward Walker and financial advisors Daniel Klippel, Sarah Kayal and Steven K. Lyons, the wealth program managed $195 million in client assets with its prior brokerage. “By aligning with LPL and INC Advisors, we can make use of a wide variety of resources, ones that can help us build our practice and ultimately enhance the way we serve our clients,” Walker said in a statement. “We really care about our clients and their financial well-being, so we’re excited to have partners that will help us offer a comprehensive range of retirement and investment services to bank customers, as well as individuals and businesses.”

Securian contributes $3M to American College’s racial equity program

Wealth manager and insurer Securian Financial donated $3 million to The American College of Financial Services’ Center for Economic Empowerment and Equality, a program launched last year by the training and certification school aimed at advancing racial equity in finance. The money will help the center to recruit and train Black advisors and other aspiring financial professionals. “Securian Financial is committed to diversifying our company and the industries in which we do business, and this initiative will further our efforts,” Dexter Davis, Securian’s chief diversity officer, said in a statement. “Recruiting and developing more Black financial advisors will better the industry and society as a whole — bringing more people currently underrepresented and underserved into this important market.”

Cetera Wealth Partners adds another ex-Voya team

Financial advisor Kate Lewis of Lewis Financial Group left Voya Financial Advisors for Cetera Advisor Networks and Cetera Wealth Partners, the region of Cetera created when the firm acquired certain assets of Voya’s wealth manager in 2021. The 34-year industry veteran’s Milwaukee-area practice managed $143 million in client assets with its prior firm. "Access to and relationships with senior management are an instrumental part of an advisor's journey,” Lewis said in a statement. “Partnering with leaders and an organization that puts clients and financial professionals first has been paramount to our growth and I look forward to this next chapter of success for our business at Cetera."

Kestra’s RIA M&A arm Bluespring acquires $850M practice

Bluespring Wealth Partners, an RIA acquirer owned by private equity-backed Kestra Holdings, has acquired a major practice that was already affiliated with Kestra’s wealth manager. Dallas-based CD Wealth Management manages more than $850 million in client assets, with a leadership team including founder Scott Cohen, Chief Investment Officer Andy Dropkin and Chief Wealth Management Officer Ilona Friedman. “No matter how well our business is doing or how fast it is growing, we are always striving for improvement,” Cohen said in a statement. “We are entirely focused on delivering wealth planning that transforms our clients’ lives, and our alignment with Bluespring Wealth Partners gives us more scale to make that happen.”

Women more optimistic about their finances after 2021

Nearly half of female investors polled as part of the Nationwide Retirement Institute’s annual Advisor Authority study said they were significantly more optimistic about their financial outlook after last year. At 49%, the share jumped 17 percentage points from 2020. The vast majority reported that they have at least some aspects of a financial plan in place, with 72% having a strategy in place protecting themselves from outliving savings and 83% who have a strategy for guaranteed income in retirement. Nearly two-thirds of the women identifying as investors, 64%, said they work with an advisor. “Women investors are not taking their experiences living through the COVID-19 pandemic or other financial crises lightly,” Ann Bair, Nationwide Financial’s senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement. “After experiencing the upheaval of these events, from market volatility to juggling childcare during remote learning, women are being more proactive in thinking about and planning for their futures.”

Raymond James adds teams in Idaho and North Carolina

The two channels of Raymond James each added new teams over the past week. Financial advisor Terry Estes left Edward Jones for Raymond James Financial Services, while Tom Killingsworth dropped Wells Fargo Advisors to join Raymond James and Associates. Estes, whose Monroe, North Carolina-based practice managed $156 million in client assets with its prior firm, aligned with an existing Raymond James enterprise called Freedom Street Partners. Killingsworth, whose practice managed $340 million with Wells Fargo, joined the Boise, Idaho-based branch of Raymond James. “We chose to align with Raymond James because of the firm’s client-first approach and forward-thinking [approach] in regards to equipping advisor teams with superior research, technology and planning tools,” Killingsworth said in a statement. “The combination of culture and resources that Raymond James offers will help us further deepen our existing client connections and foster new ones.”

Sanctuary picks up ex-Merrill Lynch team with $250M in client assets

Independent wealth manager Sanctuary recruited a Chicago-area team, Ketoret Capital, that managed $250 million in client assets with its prior firm, Merrill Lynch. The team consists of Founding Partner Kirill Vorobeychik, Partner Mary Teresa Roberto and Senior Relationship Manager Sue Wolfe. “We chose to start an independent firm because we believe that it will allow us to connect with our clients honestly and ethically, free of politics and corporate agendas, since the most important thing to us is our relationship with our clients,” Vorobeychik said in a statement. “With that objective in mind, I had done extensive due diligence on several independent firms until reaching the conclusion that partnered independence with Sanctuary Wealth was by far the best choice for us and for the clients we serve.”

Stifel poaches two teams with $450 million

Raleigh, North Carolina-based Seamster Wealth Management and Colorado Springs, Colorado-based advisors Greg and Mark Garcia joined Stifel Financial in respective moves from Wells Fargo Advisors and Merrill Lynch. Seamster’s Greg Seamster, Amanda Mullen and Amber Barefoot managed $350 million while with Wells Fargo, while the father-son team managed $100 million with their prior firm. “After decades with one firm, we needed a change that would give us more flexibility and freedom in terms of how best to serve our clients,” Seamster said in a statement.

Mercer Advisors acquires $230M practice

Westport, Connecticut-based Benemark, an RIA that manages about $230 million on behalf of 70 clients, has folded into private equity-backed RIA consolidator Mercer Global Advisors. Founder Robert Medvey and Chief Financial Officer Gregg Padilla launched Benemark in 1995. “As part of serving our clients with excellence, it’s incumbent on us as fiduciaries to make sure their financial needs are met today and into the future,” Medvey said in a statement. “Accordingly, Gregg and I decided to investigate our options vis-à-vis an external sale as part of our continuity planning.”

Janney recruits a quartet of financial advisors

After adding four advisors with nearly $400 million in combined client assets, Janney’s added brokers total nine so far in 2022 with a collective $900 million. In the larger of the two most recent additions, advisors Corey Carson, Ronald Raines and Lindsay Chandler of RCC Wealth Management joined the Janney branch in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The practice managed more than $300 million in client assets with its prior firm, Wells Fargo Advisors. In the other move, advisor Ed Prendergast moved from Edward Jones to a Janney branch in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Advisor Group’s SagePoint Financial hybrid RIA adds three practices

The AmeriFlex Group, a hybrid RIA and office of supervisory jurisdiction affiliated with Advisor Group’s SagePoint Financial, has recruited more than a half-dozen registered representatives across three advisory practices managing $721 million in client assets. The incoming teams are: Derek Pilkington, Curt Pilkington and Shanan Doherty of Denver and Sterling, Colorado-based Pilkinton Financial; Dustin Carr and Tad Lyle of Denver-based Planning Resources; and Gerald Kleber and Raz Bracha of Brea, California-based Summit Financial & Insurance Services. “I’m extremely pleased to welcome this group of incredible, highly experienced wealth management professionals to our team,” Thomas Goodson, CEO of The AmeriFlex Group, said in a statement.

Commonwealth launches virtual services program for advisors

Independent wealth manager Commonwealth Financial Network has started a new program it calls Virtual Administration for advisors seeking support from the corporate office in a range of operational tasks. The team of specialists, who work out of the firm’s operations department, work across Commonwealth’s businesses to provide alternatives to hiring part-time staff for services like training, human resources, technology and setup. “This program takes the time-consuming, day-to-day tasks off an advisor’s plate,” Jon Bohs, the firm’s senior vice president of brokerage operations, said in a statement. “And it’s one-on-one support, not a pooled service. By gaining an intimate knowledge of the firm they’re working with, VAs recognize their advisors’ needs and work to maximize efficiencies so the advisor can focus on growing their business and training their staff for more client-facing work.”

UBS creates a new business unit housing five existing ones

Wealth manager UBS created a new business unit it calls Global Family and Institutional Wealth under the leadership of George Athanasopoulos, the company’s current co-head of global markets for its investment bank. In the position, Athanasopoulos reports to Rob Karofsky, the president of the investment bank; Iqbal Khan, the co-president of the Global Wealth Management division; and Tom Naratil, the other co-president of Global Wealth Management, the three executives said in a company memo to staff. The new unit brings together five existing units: Global Family Office, United Global Markets, Global Lending, Prime Brokerage and Private Markets One Bank. Bringing them under one unit will help UBS toward its goal of further supporting “entrepreneurs, family offices and other private investors with sophisticated, institutional-like needs by providing more seamless access to the intersection of UBS’s investment banking and wealth management capabilities,” according to the memo.

Buckingham Strategic Partners buys Lumia Wealth

Lumia Wealth, an RIA in Overland Park, Kansas, will join with Buckingham Strategic Wealth of St. Louis, Missouri. Lumia is a second-generation family firm led by Brian Brush, who took over from his father-in-law, firm founder David Imhoff, in 2016. The firm, which caters to professionals, business owners and doctors in the greater Kansas City area, has used Buckingham’s affiliated comprehensive wealth platform since 2002. The deal will close by June, with Brush moving into Buckingham’s Kansas City office. That outpost opened in November 2021 after Buckingham bought RIA The Planned Approach.

Nasdaq and Hasdex launch free crypto education for advisors

The Nasdaq 100 dropped 1.2% on the first Friday in June, 2017, extending a 2.4% decline.

Nasdaq and Hashdex, a global crypto-focused asset manager, launched a free digital-assets educational program for financial advisors. The coursework provides a comprehensive overview of the digital asset landscape, including participants, institutions, rules and strategies. Lectures are led by Keith Black, a chartered financial analyst who is adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management, as well as by experts from Nasdaq and Hashdex. Sessions will include discussions with leading industry practitioners and offer up to 12 continuing education (CE) credits through the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), the Certified Financial Planner board (CFP) and the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute (CFA).