Amid growing number of breakaways, Sanctuary adds 17th team of 2021

An ex-wirehouse team and a former Ameriprise financial advisor merged their practices together to become the 17th this year to join a fast-growing wealth manager with international backing.

Geoff Stufflebam, Kraig Bode, Ken Roberts and Shweta Agarwal launched NobleVest Private Wealth in Springfield, Missouri, in an independent move affiliating the new firm with Sanctuary Wealth, the firm said on Oct. 22. Bode left Ameriprise, while the three other advisors exited from Morgan Stanley. They managed $400 million in client assets with their prior firms.

Sanctuary and other independent firms are recruiting more ex-wirehouse advisors this year as remote work during the coronavirus prompts teams to reconsider their existing setup, according to brokers and recruiters. Sanctuary, which opened in 2018 and received a 55% equity investment from Italian asset manager Azimut Group earlier this year, has added at least two teams with more than $1 billion in client assets from Merrill Lynch in 2021 and reached more than $17 billion in assets under advisement.

“Our clients are demanding a lot more from us, and we just really wanted to make a move that made sense for our clients and us,” Stufflebam said in an interview. “It was just time to transition from something good to something great.”

He and Bode have stayed in close contact since becoming friends in college, when Stufflebam was at Drury University and Bode was attending Missouri State University.

“We can continue to deliver a great experience for our clients but with a little bit more freedom than we've been accustomed to,” Bode said.

Representatives for Morgan Stanley and Ameriprise, where Stufflebam and Bode have spent their entire respective careers of roughly a decade and a half, declined to comment on their move.

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Sanctuary and competitors such as Dynasty Financial Partners and Focus Financial Partners are finding success recruiting wirehouse teams like NobleVest whose practices are majority fee-based advisory accounts, recruiter Frank LaRosa of Elite Consulting Partners said in an interview last month. Even though the wirehouses are boosting their advisory assets significantly, they’re “not really incentivizing” the teams to stay, LaRosa said, predicting that the level of independent moves will be “even more feverish” in 2022.

“The company gets a higher valuation from the Street with the more advisory business the firm has, but the firm is not rewarding practices the same way,” he said. “They're effectively giving the same payout to a financial advisor who is majority fee-based as an advisor who is 50-50.”

Indeed, Sanctuary has added many major teams this year, especially from founder and ex-Merrill Lynch executive Jim Dickson’s former firm. In April, Quorum Private Wealth became the largest incoming team in Sanctuary’s history, at $1.5 billion in client assets. In June, Sanctuary added mFORCE Capital, which had managed $1.22 billion while at Merrill Lynch. The latest newcomers, NobleVest, have five employees on their team, and they’ll use Sanctuary’s broker-dealer and RIA.

“As an independent business, all four founding partners will have the time and the freedom to develop deeper relationships with their existing clients and the time and opportunity to forge new ones,” Sanctuary’s president of wealth management, Vince Fertitta, said in a statement.