LPL Financial, Morgan Stanley, Mercer Advisors, plus a 100-client fraud scheme, a fintech for charity and a PGA endorsement

October 1, 2021 2:20 PM

LPL Financial and Mercer Advisors picked up planners this week. Morgan Stenley is offering virtual training for financial advisors, estate planning lawyers, CPAs and others. An alleged fraudster had 44 disclosures on Broker Check. Scroll through to find what you might have missed this week in financial planning news.

Barred ex-financial advisor Michael F. Shillin

faces

an SEC case alleging he defrauded at least 100 clients. Shillin, a former Raymond James Financial Services advisor with 44 disclosures on his BrokerCheck record, misrepresented the value of clients’ investments and the fact that they had not subscribed in IPO or pre-IPO shares of high-profile companies, investigators said. In addition, Shillin sold several of the clients on rolling their existing life insurance policies into new products that were non-existent or had much smaller benefits that he suggested, according to the SEC’s complaint in the Western District of Wisconsin. Investigators say he amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains.

Financial advisors Corey Basehore, Justin Dunwoody and Sarah Leer, plus the two junior advisors and nine other staff members of Polaris Advisors, left MassMutual’s MML Investors Services for LPL Financial’s Strategic Wealth Services. The Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based team managed $675 million in client assets with its prior firm before moving to LPL’s breakaway channel. “We really appreciate all that SWS brings to the team, and we truly believe this is the best way to elevate our service and enrich the client experience,” Dunwoody said in a statement. “We don’t have the bandwidth to re-create all of these customized services on our own. Being a part of SWS allows our team to focus on the client experience and future growth.”

RIA aggregator Mercer Advisors acquired Seattle-area Miller Advisors, the mother-daughter team of Kathleen and Nicole Miller. The 29-year-old RIA based in Kirkland, Washington, manages $240 million in assets from roughly 200 clients. “Our clients are at the foundation of what we do and who we are as a firm,” Kathleen Miller said in a statement. “Finding a partner with a similar mission of putting clients first and offering lifecycle planning using financial planning principles was essential to us.”

Morgan Stanley launched the first version of a virtual training program for financial advisors, estate planning lawyers, CPAs, family office executives and other professionals working with ultra-high-net-worth wealth management clients. The Morgan Stanley Family Legacy and Governance Institute, expected to be offered annually through the firm’s Family Office Resources unit, started this week with a focus on family governance planning. “When we think about the success of families over multiple generations, we have seen that long-term success relies heavily upon matters including aligning around a deeply held set of shared family values, building a family mission and creating strong processes for making decisions together with respect to their joint enterprise,” Glenn Kurlander, Morgan Stanley’s head of family governance and wealth education, said in a statement.

Carson Wealth Management Group building, CWM, provided by Carson Group.

Carson Partners recruited an 11-person team, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based RFC Financial Planners. Advisors Michael Rautiola and Adam Finch managed $300 million in client assets with their prior firm, Sigma Financial. They’re now affiliated with Carson as their RIA and Cetera Financial Group’s Cetera Advisor Networks as their broker-dealer. “Our firm will have single-pane, streamlined technology and be able to directly manage our clients’ workplace retirement accounts,” Rautiola said in a statement. “Additionally, we are looking forward to growing our offerings of multi-generational planning and values-based investment management.”

FINRA, the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy and the North American Securities Administrators Association launched a campaign designed to help financial advisors and other wealth managers comply with

the rule

requiring FINRA members to ask for a trusted contact when opening or updating a client account. The regulators provided an explanatory

video

,

infographic

and

webpage

to help advisors and clients understand how the guidelines work and how to find the right person to designate in certain limited circumstances, such as when there are concerns about activity in a particular account or the firm has been unable to reach the customer. “Investor protection is at the core of FINRA's mission, and this collaborative effort with NASAA and the SEC OIEA reflects our shared commitment to better inform and protect investors,” FINRA CEO Robert Cook said in a statement. “All investors can benefit from adding a trusted contact to their account — having one or more trusted contacts provides another layer of security on the account and puts the financial firm in a better position to help keep the account safe.”

Three teams with five advisors and more than $500 million in combined client assets joined The AmeriFlex Group, a hybrid RIA and office of supervisory jurisdiction with Advisor Group’s SagePoint Financial. The teams are: Jim Lingelbach and Ciano Villaquiran of La Jolla, California-based CURO Financial and Insurance Solutions; Joe and John Lutz of La Mesa, California-based Lutz Wealth Advisors; and Scott Chelberg of Carlsbad, California-based Retirement Solutions. Lingelbach and Villaquiran came to SagePoint from MassMutual’s MML Investors Services, while the other two practices were already affiliated with the broker-dealer before moving into AmeriFlex’s enterprise. “There is a growing desire in our industry for a strong community that provides continuity and opportunity for meaningful succession planning,” AmeriFlex CEO Thomas Goodson said in a statement. “As a firm built upon a broad advisor ownership model, we don’t view these advisors joining our team as a recruitment win. Rather, we see this association as an opportunity to continue to grow our network of partner-advisors across Southern California.”

Financial advisors Steve Vujevich and Matthew Anderson left an RIA called Keebeck Wealth Management to launch their own RIA, Columbus, Ohio- and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Advocus Private Wealth. They managed $400 million in client assets with their prior firm, and they launched the RIA while receiving an equity investment from Summit Financial Holdings’ M&A arm, Summit Growth Partners, as well as using the firm’s SummitVantage independent advisor platform. The team had previously left Merrill Lynch last year after nearly two decades with the wirehouse. “We came to realize that our initial move to independence did not provide the excellent level of resources and support that we expected and our clients deserved,” Vujevich said in a statement. “Therefore, we conducted extensive due diligence to identify a partner who could offer a broad spectrum of in-house talent to support us with comprehensive financial planning and other key capabilities, as well as tech solutions, and who would help us exceed, rather than simply meet, client expectations of service and value-add.”

The FPA and the Foundation for Financial Planning gave the Orange County chapter its 2021 Power of Financial Planning Award for pro bono service “that transforms lives through the power of financial planning,” according to the award’s mission statement. At least 23 different advisors from the chapter contributed a combined 250 hours of pro bono planning to 114 people by partnering with organizations such as Orange County United Way, Habitat for Humanity of Orange County and Goodwill. The chapter also boosted engagement through bilingual advertising campaigns, digital scheduling and messaging, and other means. “The incredible work our members are doing at the FPA of Orange County is opening doors and making financial planning more accessible,” FPA President Skip Schweiss said in a statement. “Their efforts are a testament to the power of planning and serve as a model for all our chapters to follow.”

LPL Financial enterprise JFC Advisor Network added First Legacy Wealth Management advisors Dennis Reed, Lance Modawell and Steve Stone, as well as Reed’s son Walter. The San Angelo and Big Spring, Texas-based team managed $400 million in client assets with its prior firm, Avantax. “When we realized LPL’s client-oriented business model aligned with ours, the choice to move was an easy one,” Dennis Reed said in a statement. “We will be backed by the firm’s dependable and unwavering support that emboldens us to dictate our business model, further develop our practice and strengthen our client relationships.”

Kovitz Investment Group, an independent RIA with more than $7 billion in client assets, has reached an endorsement deal with PGA Tour golfer Dylan Wu. At 25 years old, Wu was No. 31 at the U.S. Open this summer and earned his 2022 PGA Tour card with his play on the developmental Korn Ferry Tour. Wu met Kovitz founder Michell Kovitz about five years ago when the pro golfer was a caddy at the Lake Shore Country Club in the Chicago area. “I am ecstatic we have the opportunity to work with Dylan,” Kovitz said. “After getting to know him at Lake Shore, I was impressed with his humility, demeanor and intellectual curiosity. Since then, we have kept in touch and now have the opportunity to support him in his new endeavors on tour.”

Docupace, which provides cloud-based document management for the wealth management industry, announced it had acquired PreciseFP, a company that helps advisors collect client data. Combining PreciseFP’s tech with Docupace’s existing workflows and digital signature capability will help create a completely paperless account-opening process for financial advisors, according to Docupace CEO David Knoch. It’s the second acquisition in five month for Docupace, which received an infusion of growth equity from FTV Capital in 2020.

Former Wealthfront CEO Adam Nash is back in the fintech game with the launch of Daffy Charitable, a digital platform for charitable giving. Using a mobile app, Daffy lets people designate how much money they would like to set aside for charity each year and then automatically invests the assets in one of nine portfolios. Users can then pick from a list of 1.5 million charities to which they want to donate. The company was founded as a donor-advised fund, allowing Daffy members to receive immediate tax deductions for contributions. Instead of charging based on a percentage of assets in accounts like most DAFs, Daffy charges a flat fee of $3 per month. The startup has raised $4.8 million in seed funding from companies like Ribbit Capital, XYZ Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.