New private wealth exec fuels Citizens' ambitions by wooing advisors for HNW clients

Citizens Financial Group has been moving quickly to carve out a space for itself in wealth management.

After losing out to JPMorgan last spring in its bid to buy the cratering First Republic Bank, Citizens promptly hired 50 former First Republic private bankers and staff members. Its string of recent acquisitions include Clarfeld Financial Advisors, a New York firm that had $7.5 billion under management and supervision at the time of its purchase.

Citizens went on late last year to found a private bank with a goal of having $10 billion under management by 2025. Its recruiting coups have included hiring the Morgan Stanley lifer Paul Casey, who will be brought on in July to oversee its wealth management business. It also recently went back to the First Republic well, pulling in a 12-member team made up of former wealth managers at the now-defunct San Francisco bank.

Even before bringing on Casey, Citizens had gone to JPMorgan to recruit two more executives for its wealth units. One of them, Tom Metzger, had briefly been in charge of advisor recruiting at First Republic before its collapse last year.

Now, as senior vice president of Citizens' private wealth management, Metzger finds himself working closely with the private bank to provide an array of financial planning services to wealthy clients.

"We have a really great platform from the RIA that was built over many years at Clarfeld," Metzger said. "It's a planning-focused platform that offers tax planning and highly sophisticated financial planning and estate planning. Now marry that with the opportunity to partner with best-in-class private bankers that understand high class white-glove service but also intimately understand client balance sheets."

READ MORE:
Citizens reports fast progress in building its private bank
More ex-First Republic advisors exit JPMorgan for smaller firms
Citizens Financial taps Paul Casey of Morgan Stanley to lead wealth, new private banking unit
Citizens Financial hires two JPMorgan execs for key roles at private bank
Citizens hires 50 ex-First Republic private bankers

Before joining First Republic and then JPMorgan, Metzger spent eight years at Wells Fargo in Rosedale, California, eventually overseeing the firm's northern California and northern Nevada wealth management markets. That was preceded by stints at JPMorgan Securities and Chase Investment Services.

Metzger recently sat down with Financial Planning to discuss his plans for his new role and where he sees Citizens fitting in the wealth management world.

This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Financial Planning: What do you see as your primary role at Citizens?

Tom Metzger: I think within our overall wealth management offering, we offer a great deliverable for clients. We have advisors in bank branches, and then we have a private wealth offering. And within that we have our RIA, Clarfeld — we have these great new bankers that came over last year. And we're focused on our key markets: Boston, New York, southern Florida and San Francisco.

My role is to bring in high caliber advisors and wealth managers and service clients in the more high net worth and ultrahigh net worth segment.

FP: Why is Citizens making a big push into wealth management now? What opportunities do you see out there for an institution like yours?

TM: There's an interest out in the market for advisors being able to service both sides of the balance sheet.

So it's being able to refer [clients] to great bankers that can help with their sophisticated credit needs while also being able to provide wealth management expertise. Where Citizens sits so uniquely is that we provide both. We have a great platform with our RIA and a broker-dealer for advisors to go to and give that deliverable.

We're also very nimble. We're a very flat organization. We can make decisions quickly.

FP: What do you see as your strengths in recruiting? What kinds of advisors and teams are you looking to bring in?

TM: We're going to be highly selective on the quality and culture and the types of personalities that we want to bring in. We know that that is a direct correlation to the type of clients they win, as well.

But what firm they come from, I think, is somewhat irrelevant. We are drawing interest from — you name it. There are lots of folks who are very interested to hear more about our story.

So we're not as focused on whether advisors of this caliber come from a particular place, whether you call it a wirehouse or whether you call it an RIA. For us, it's going to be about the actual candidate, the type of clients that they work with. And with those advisors and that level of client backed against our platform, we think that's going to be a winning combination.

FP: Lots of former First Republic advisors are still leaving JPMorgan and moving their practices to other firms. Do you see yourself going back to that well for more recruiting?

TM: Advisors are entrepreneurial. They're independent thinkers. They are entirely focused on delivering the very best client experience. That's where I'm proud that advisors of this caliber have looked at the platform of Citizens and found that we have all the ability and all raw material they need.

But we're going to be agnostic as to what firm, what channel, what place an advisor comes from. It's going to be about who they are — the type of experience they have, the caliber of their team and how they treat each other and how they fit into our culture.

I think all that's going to be the winning strategy.