A large advisory network managing $6.4 billion is leaving Raymond James' independent channel to seek what it calls still greater independence at Dynasty Financial Partners.
SageSpring Wealth Partners, a Franklin, Tennessee-based registered investment advisor, is bringing its 45 advisory teams and 10,000 clients over to Dynasty, itself a network of 55 firms managing roughly $105 billion. SageSpring was previously affiliated with Raymond James Financial Services, the St. Petersburg, Florida-based firm's channel for independent advisors. It's also moving its custodial relationship from Raymond James to Fidelity Investments.
SageSpring President Jeffrey Dobyns said in an interview Tuesday that he and his colleagues were looking for freedom to acquire new technology without having to worry about how it would work with Raymond James' existing systems. He said SageSpring was seeking more leeway for everything from tax-harvesting software, used to lower clients' capital-gains burdens, to a customer relationship management system, its main means of interacting with investors digitally.
"We just need to be sure that we can always have the most robust offering," Dobyns said. "And if it starts to become not the most robust offering, we want to be sure that we have the ability to to move away from it and to transition to something better, more quickly than it being left up to somebody else."
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Dobyns said he has no complaints about Raymond James and still would recommend Raymond James Financial Services to advisors seeking a greater degree of independence. He said he understands how a large firm might struggle to accommodate the technological needs of a diverse group of subordinate wealth advisors.
"That's a hard thing to do, when you've got lots of people asking it for different things, and it's hard to integrate," Dobyns said. "And then, before you've even integrated, other people are asking for different things. That's an issue I don't know how to solve other than we just want to have complete control over it so we can dictate what we're accessing, what we're providing to clients and advisors."
Shopping around for independence
Raymond James did not respond to a request for comment. Dobyns said he and his colleagues considered several partners before choosing Dynasty.
Dynasty, which
"The other key is we didn't want to go out and have to manage all that integration between all those different technologies," Dobyns said. "So plugging into Dynasty allowed us to really have access immediately to all those different tech providers, but also the integration of that, the training on that, the onboarding."
SageSpring is also among a number of firms that have grown large enough to shed their brokerage affiliations and rely on management fees for revenue.
"We dropped all of our Series 7 commission licenses when we made this last shift," Dobyns said. "So we're completely independent and completely fee-only now."
String of Raymond James departures
SageSpring is one of several large practices to leave Raymond James in recent years. Steward Partners, a New York-based firm,
Raymond James CEO Paul Reilly said
"It takes time to effect these movements, but a portion of those assets left the firm in the fiscal fourth quarter, totaling roughly $3 billion of (assets under administration)," Reilly said, according to a
SageSpring noted for training young advisors
SageSpring traces its roots to 2002 to the Southwestern Family of Companies, a business conglomerate in the Nashville area. It changed its name to
SageSpring now has offices in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Nebraska and Iowa. It bills itself as an expert in working with the "millionaires next door." Its growth plans include offering more multifamily-office services to wealthy families and individual clients.
SageSpring is also one of the few RIAs to offer a training program for advisors just joining the industry. Like many firms that are eager to bring in newcomers to wealth management, SageSpring is seeking to ensure its older advisors have someone they can bequeath their books of business to when they retire.
Dobyns said he thinks very few RIAs are investing in training in part because it's "hard."
"It's a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of trust," he said.
SageSpring has also been noted for making it unusually difficult for advisors to leave for rivals. The industry publication CityWire
Shirl Penney, the CEO and founder of Dynasty Financial Partners, said SageSpring's willingness to train young advisors accounts for a large part of the firm's appeal.
"They have built an impressive business over the years, and their focus on bringing in young talent and building the next generation of advisors is inspiring," Penney said in a statement. "Given our focus on mentoring and guiding our network of firms, we very much look forward to collaborating with them to write the next chapter of our industry's growth."
