Dynasty Financial Partners this week hired Loren Morris as its new partner and director of RIA Services and detailed its ambitious plan to expand its advisor network to between 100 and 150 top-tier RIAs with total assets under management of around $50 billion over the next five years.
Morris, who previously served as national head of the consolidator segment for Charles Schwab Advisor Services' strategic business development group, will be responsible for recruiting and hiring new financial advisor teams to Dynasty's technology and investment platform.
The plan for now is to sign on individual advisors and advisor teams with more than $300 million in assets under management with Morris serving as the liaison to help them and their clients migrate to the Dynasty platform.
"I could not be more excited to join Dynasty," Morris said. "The leadership team, the vision, the commitment from the Board of Directors, and the depth of proven experience with advisors and high net worth clients is unmatched in the industry."
Dynasty President and CEO Shirl Penney said the one-year-old firm's mantra is to provide "best in class" investment products and services to elite RIAs including technology, institutional-quality research on money managers, insurance, trust services, capital markets, alternative investments and investment banking.
"With the addition of Loren, we are officially launching the RIA servicing group, but since our core business is servicing RIA's, our entire team has been doing this since our launch in December," Penney said. "Loren will serve as a central point of contact for our advisors to gain access to our expanding offering of services to the top RIA's in the country."
Morris described the current pipeline of independent advisors "robust" and said "there has never been a better time than right now to be an advocate for independence."
With so many breakaway brokers and advisors
"Many of the best wealth management advisors are leaving major wirehouses for the independent space and we believe this decentralization of top-tier intellectual capital away from Wall Street will continue for quite some time," Penney said.
Morris said Dynasty's open-architecture platform is specifically designed to supply sophisticated independent advisory firms catering to high net worth clients with "the most complete, technologically-advanced and conflict-free capabilities" and that it works closely with most of the major RIA custodians so Dynasty can integrate the custody aspect of the relationship in a seamless fashion.
"We also take no equity in the RIA firms in our network, which allows advisors using the Dynasty platform to benefit from all upside enterprise value in their firm, and maintain their own autonomy and brand," he added.
Prior to his tenure at Charles Schwab, Morris was managing director at RCM Saratoga Capital and also worked as an investment banker in Merrill Lynch's global financial institutions group.
