Sometimes in recruiting, it's all about having the right relationships.
For independent broker-dealer Kestra Financial, that's what played in its favor when it began wooing a big team at Principal Securities based in Fort Worth, Texas.
The team,
"They were pretty close," Stephen Langlois, the president of Kestra Financial, said of Symonds and Merkel in an interview. "She was also one of the larger teams from the prior broker-dealer." At the time of her move, Merkel
In today's
Recognizing this, Kestra often encourages recruits to chat with its advisors about how Kestra solved the pain points they had at their old firm, Langlois said.
"Our existing advisors are often the best references and touch points for folks who are thinking of making this big move."
Industry recruiter Jodie Papike, the
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Papike, who has worked with Kestra in the past but was not part of this transition, said the Symonds move is "a very significant accomplishment for Kestra, considering the team is as large as they are."
Reached for comment on this story, Merkel and representatives at Principal did not respond.
The path to a $1.7B touchdown
In the case of getting Merkel to join Kestra, it all began years ago with a recruiter in the Midwest who bonded with her around their shared love of football, Langlois said. (Langlois joined around the same time as Merkel and wasn't personally involved with her move, but had heard of it from others.) "Her son is a big football player; that's what they connected on," he said.
The positive impression Merkel had from that initial connection opened the door for her to check out the firm's tech platforms and pay Kestra a home office visit at their Austin, Texas headquarters. She appreciated Kestra's focus on "large established advisors who are fee-based in their business, and planning-led," Langlois said.
Following her move, Merkel quickly became "very, very involved in [the] community" at Kestra and is now on the Kestra Advisory Council, Langlois said.
Around two or three years later, Merkel's former colleague Dax Symonds was also looking for a change. "It was definitely not an easy decision for Dax," Zach Clariday, an operations manager on the Symonds team, said in an interview. "He's been there for 25-plus years." Clariday said he believed that Symonds began the search for a new firm in the fall or winter of late 2022; Langlois recalled it was around 1.5 to two years ago, which would put it between fall 2021 and spring 2022.
"Dax relied on his relationships with just other colleagues that had made a transition before," Clariday said. When Merkel shared about her "very good experience" at her new firm, "that's what prompted us to interview Kestra."
Other options were considered, and the team conducted due diligence, but ultimately it settled on Kestra, Clariday said. He added that after the team made its commitment, the transition involved "its ups and downs" as with any of this size, but on the whole went "very smoothly." He declined to comment on how many clients had been brought over, but said Kestra stepped in with "a dedicated onboarding team that helped us get trained on all of their software, helped us throughout … to get all the accounts open."
Clariday said that since his team had been independent 1099 contractors in the past and remained independent at Kestra, the client experience during the transition was relatively stable. "Our trading platform was the same, our custodian stayed the same," he said. "They log into a very similar-looking client portal. Their statements look identical, there's just a different logo on it." Clients asked mainly if their advisor would remain the same, reflecting their dependence on long-nurtured relationships, he said.
The
The family factor
Symonds did not respond immediately to questions about his move, and Clariday said he wasn't certain what triggered the sudden decision to leave. But another relationship at Kestra seems likely to have helped give the firm a closer look in the due diligence process, and may have played a role in spurring the change.
FINRA BrokerCheck and LinkedIn records show that the senior Symonds
"I learned a great deal from working with Kestra Financial about how large broker/dealers are run and operated. I also learned about what financial planners need to be useful for their clients," Turner Symonds
Asked about what role Turner Symonds played in his father's decision to choose Kestra, a spokesperson for Kestra said in an email that they could confirm that "Turner did work for Kestra as an intern and on the wealth consulting desk and now is at Dax's practice." In July, the younger Symonds joined his father's practice, according to LinkedIn.
"In general, advisor movement is away from broker-dealers owned by insurance companies and to more open-architecture independent firms with a broader-based set of investment options," industry recruiter Mark Elzweig said of the move in an email, adding that while he wasn't familiar with the team in question, their former home Principal Securities is owned by an insurance-focused company.
Enticing tech offerings
Kestra also showed off its tech capabilities to the team, which impressed Symonds and was an important factor in his decision to join. "They can deliver on our technology needs and provide consulting support that will round out our ensemble practice," Symonds said of Kestra in the press release, adding that he was looking for a place that would help the team grow faster. In addition, "Kestra's private ownership, strong foundation and solid financial footing gave us the confidence to move forward."
Kestra is
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Langlois said his firm spends a considerable amount of time with recruits to demonstrate "our technology stack and what the actual advisor experience is: opening new accounts, managing accounts and doing all of the operational aspects of their business." Most of this is done through a series of "tech demos," generally run remotely. The firm provides integrated services as much as possible, he said, but also uses popular third-party applications on the tech stack. "Larger established advisors often will come in wanting to use a certain financial planning tool or another," like e-Money, he said. "We've integrated them pretty well," he said, but the result is "not as tightly integrated as a closed architecture system." On the whole, "our technology, from our existing advisors, gets strong marks."
'Breaking bread' at the home office
Kestra also invites all its recruits to the home office, Langlois said, which the firm prides itself on as an opportunity to show their attentiveness to the prospective team. "Sometimes they bring their husbands or their wives with them. Because these are just really important decisions that affect their family's lives."
The whole day is one long series of dates with different departments and leaders and compliance staff, to showcase how the firm supports advisors. "They get to meet folks who are working on our concierge desk, which is the desk that takes all the calls... for issue resolution."
The firm's intent is to convey a message of tight-knit community among its independent "associated" financial professionals, whose ranks number over 1,700 and who collectively oversee $103 billion in assets under advisement, according to the press release. "We firmly believe you've got to come, and you've got to shake people's hands and look them in the eye and break bread with them, and really get a full appreciation for what we're up to," Langlois said.
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Kestra's brand certainly shines during a home office visit,
"They have a wall of family photos," she said. "You don't see that everywhere." While it wasn't clear whether the photos were of families of advisors or other staff, the message conveyed was one of support for workers' personal lives. Since the advisors at Kestra are running independent practices, they are all allowed to dictate if they and their staff work fully remotely, fully in person or somewhere in between, a Kestra spokesperson confirmed in an email.
"They make the advisors feel like you're part of a great community of advisors with no inhibitions," Frank said.
