What you missed in wealth management: May 10-14

May 14, 2021 12:45 PM

J.P. Morgan, Commonwealth Financial and D.A. Davidson brought new advisor teams on board; RBC announced two new complex directors and recruited a $460 million team from Wells Fargo; Raymond James and Neuberger Berman hired new executives; plus news from the fintech world, financial crimes, retirement data, and more in quick takes from the week in wealth management.

Signage is displayed at JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters in New York, U.S., on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. JPMorgan CEO Dimon has made the case for a broader return, saying his firm has seen "alienation" among younger workers and that an extended stretch of working from home could bring long-term economic and social damage. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

J.P. Morgan Wealth Management added The Donohue Group in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, from Morgan Stanley. The team, which manages $1.1 billion in assets, includes Mark Donohue, wealth partner; Butch Massaro, investment associate; and Steven Olson, client associate, in Florida as well as Gordon Sommer, wealth advisor, in New York City. J.P. Morgan also brought in Keith “KR” Ward as a New York-based wealth advisor. Joining from Merrill Lynch, Ward manages over $230 million in client assets.

Mark Gherity will lead 124 advisors and 105 support staff across seven branch offices.

RBC has named two new complex directors. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Canadian bank appointed Mark Gherity, who will lead 124 advisors and 105 support staff across seven branch offices managing approximately $23.4 billion in assets. “I am passionate about mentoring and cultivating advisors to grow both personally and professionally,” Gherity said in a statement.

In Phoenix, the broker-dealer hired Jesse Witt, a former Wells Fargo regional manager, as its new complex director. In his new role, Witt will lead 71 advisors and 57 support staff across six branch offices managing roughly $12 billion in assets. Witt is succeeding Glen Hatch, who is retiring.

“I am honored to join an exceptional company in a region with so much potential for growth,” Witt said.

The Heald Wealth Management Group joined RBC in in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

RBC Wealth Management recruited a $460 million Wells Fargo team specializing in retirement income planning and asset management for high-net-worth individuals, families and trusts.

Advisors Timothy Heald and Andrew Heald will be joining RBC in in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

“We were looking for a firm with all the resources, tools and support our team needs to service the complex financial needs of our clients, and we found that in RBC Wealth Management,” the team said in a statement.

D.A. Davidson Expands with a Merger and a Name Change

D. A. Davidson hired a four-person Wells Fargo team and opened a new wealth management office in Grand Junction, Colorado. The new team includes Cheryl Squier, Brooke Martinez and Clay Squier, and they collectively manage $244 million in client assets.

Raymond James hired former E-Trade product executive Raj Bhaskar as vice president of technology strategy for the firm’s RIA & Custody Services division.

At E-Trade, Bhaskar was head of strategy for its product suite for independent advisors and wealth management firms. In his new role at Raymond James, he will report to Stuart Feld, senior vice president of technology.

“Raj brings a wealth of experience and a deep knowledge of the technology needs specific to the registered investment advisor world,” Greg Bruce, head of the RIA custody division, said in a statement.

Bloomberg News

Fidelity Institutional has introduced a new dashboard to Integration Xchange, the digital store of APIs that third-party technology vendors can use to integrate with the custodial platform. The dashboard will let fintechs and wealth management firms identify points of service disruption and ensure connectivity, according to the company.

Fidelity is also giving financial institutions more control over the data they share with fintechs on Integration Xchange, and rolled out some new APIs to improve workflows and alerting. The custodian claims it supports integrations with more than 200 fintech providers.

On the retail side, Fidelity also announced that retirement accounts it holds hit record highs for the second quarter in a row. IRAs held an average balance of $130,000, up 1% from last quarter and 31% from the first quarter of last year. 401(k)s total $123,900 on average, 2% higher than last quarter and 36% higher than a year ago. For 403(b)s, the average account balance was $107,300, up 1% from last quarter and 42% from a year ago.

Bloomberg News

LPL has a new tool for its network of 18,000 financial advisors to make client meeting preparation easier. While advisors say it takes hours and an average of six different apps to prep for a single meeting, LPL’s Meeting Manager centralizes all of the necessary information information into a single digital location.

“Not only can advisors gain a significant amount of time back into their day, they have the ability to make meetings more personalized and productive for their clients,” says Kirby Horan-Adams, LPL's executive vice president of advisor solutions, in a statement.

Jeffrey Sauers

Women advisors should get certified as CFPs, says the group that confers CFP certification.

Those who do are more confident and happier in their careers than women advisors who don’t hold the designation, according to a new study from the CFP Board and Aite Research. And it’s important for the industry, the board said: “Efforts to increase the representation of credentialed client-facing female advisors are critical to baby boomer asset retention and to appeal to millennial women, more of whom manage their finances alone compared to older generations.”

Portfolio management fintech First Rate has acquired Vantage Software, which builds a number of software modules financial institutions can use for investment reporting, accounting and analysis. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. First Rate’s purchase of Vantage comes on heels of an investment into an innovation lab in India and the launch of new AI-powered reporting capabilities and data aggregation functions.

Neuberger Berman, which oversees $284 billion, has expanded assets at its alternatives unit and in fixed income, its largest business.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News

Neuberger Berman hired Greg Khost as head of wealth management sales.

In the position, Khost will oversee the Neuberger Berman’s wealth advisor sales and will find and onboard new teams, reporting to Stephanie Luedke, head of private wealth management.

Khost, a 30-year industry veteran, comes from Deutsche Bank’s Private Bank and previously worked at U.S. Trust, Central Park Group, Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers.

Commonwealth Financial Network added dually-registered FS Financial of Southington, Connecticut, to its network of independent financial advisors.

The former Wells Fargo group manages some $200 million and includes financial advisors Aaron Sehl and Vincent Feijoo and staffer Michele Molitor.

“We’re looking forward to being in control of how we want to run our business as it evolves, helping the people we want to help, and partnering with a firm that’s supportive of the way we want to run our business,” Sehl said in a statement.

This week in financial-advisor crime: a Swampscott, Massachusetts, financial advisor, Felix Gorovodsky, pleaded guilty in a federal court to stealing an elderly client’s retirement funds. He’ll serve 33 months in jail and pay back $318,000. Gorovodsky isn’t listed as an advisor in BrokerCheck.

In a separate case in Central Islip, New York, Mark A. Lisser pleaded guilty to federal securities fraud conspiracy, admitting to misappropriating some $700,000 in commissions from hoodwinked investors to whom he sold pre-IPO shares he lied about owning. Lisser, of Massapequa, New York, has been registered with six firms over 14 years and has nine disclosures on his BrokerCheck record, most of which were customer disputes.

And former Raymond James advisor Fredrick M. Stow, of Franklin, Tennessee, was also sentenced to 5 years in federal prison for stealing $933,500 from elderly clients.