RBC, LPL, Raymond James, plus advisor fraud, FPA leaders and more

October 22, 2021 12:22 PM

An advisor who had “special investment opportunities” is pleading guilty to just pocketing the money. A new fintech accelerator that has already generated $1.6 billion in venture capital is taking new applications. And as always, we have news of advisors on the move throughout the country. See where they left and landed below. Scroll through to find what you might have missed this week in financial planning news.

Janney Montgomery Scott appointed veteran former Wells Fargo executive Diane Gabriel to be the regional employee brokerage’s director of recruiting. A former financial advisor who got her start in the industry in 1982, Gabriel reports to Caitlin Ulmer-Long, Janney’s head of Private Client Group administration. She’s replacing Jeff Smith, who is shifting from leading Janney’s recruiting for the past five years to being the complex manager for three branches in the Baltimore area. Most recently, Gabriel served as head of next generation talent at Wells Fargo Advisors after time with the firm’s independent arm, Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, overseeing financial advisor support and client service. “It’s an exciting step in my career to help attract financial advisors to a firm with a reputation for an entrepreneurially minded approach that puts financial advisors and their clients at the center, coupled with a long history of recruiting success,” Gabriel said in a statement.

Applications are open for a 12-week fintech accelerator program that has generated more than $1.6 billion in venture capital and led to the creation of more than 1,500 jobs in New York City over its first dozen years.

FinTech Innovation Lab New York

is seeking early- and growth-stage entrepreneurs across financial services with a working beta version of tech for institutional or retail clients. Senior-level bank, insurance, fund company and wealth management firms such as BlackRock, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo will assist participants in the development of their tech and businesses in one-on-one, panel and user-group sessions, in addition to networking opportunities. The program ends with a demo day presentation for venture capitalists and financial industry executives. Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City, the investment arm of a city business nonprofit organization, run the accelerator.

Raymond James has consolidated firm, department and practice notifications in a single centralized dashboard called the Alerts Portal. The change will give advisors more ways to customize the alerts they receive and how they organize tasks for individual staff members or teams, according to Chief Information Officer Vin Campagnoli. The Alerts Portal has been fully rolled out to Raymond James’s 8,400 advisors.

Berger Financial Group, a Minneapolis-based hybrid RIA with $1.3 billion in client assets, made its largest acquisition to date outside of its home state by acquiring Dane Holdings. The Scottsdale and Sun City West, Arizona-based practice led by founding advisor Danny Meyer had about $220 million in client assets under its prior affiliation with Cambridge Investment Research. After adding Meyer and two other advisors after the Oct. 15 close of the deal, Berger has reached 21 across the firm following 13 acquisitions. “After more than 20 years of running Dane Holdings, we are excited to see a firm as successful and forward-thinking as Berger Financial Group take over,” Meyer said in a statement. “Our current clients will benefit from having access to a leader in wealth management with a diverse roster of clients.”

This week’s

Black Wealth Summit

offered new, intermediate, seasoned and accredited investors a series of informative speeches and panels on entrepreneurship, securities, real estate and private equity as part of programming that’s “unapologetically invested in the prosperity of Black people.” Sponsors included Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Charles Schwab and Raymond James. Ariel Investments CEO John Rogers, Raymond James CEO Paul Reilly and Morgan Stanley Head of Wealth Management Andy Saperstein spoke to more than 1,500 attendees in the event’s second year. Student teams from historically Black colleges and universities competed for up to $30,000 in prizes in a contest for the best idea for a business.

Former Merrill Lynch financial advisor Peter Shunyia left the wirehouse to launch an independent practice called Shunyia & Co. Private Wealth Advisors under his new affiliation with LPL Financial. The Troy, Michigan-based team managed about $150 million in client assets with its prior firm, and the 20-year industry veteran chose America Group Retirement Strategy Centers as its office of supervisory jurisdiction. “With the robust resources, innovative solutions and a wide-reaching advisor network of a Fortune 500 company, LPL is the right home for my financial practice,” Shunyia said in a statement. “The company provides everything that my clients and I are looking for — from integrated technology to financial planning tools.”

The Financial Planning Association’s FPA NexGen elected five new members for one- or two-year terms on its leadership committee starting in January. The new members to the 15-person committee are: FPA NexGen President-elect Amie Agamata from San Diego, FPA NexGen Gathering Coordinator Emma Cramm from Dallas, FPA NexGen Organizational Director Rebecca Montes from Dallas, FPA NexGen Local Leader Coordinator Daniel Murphy of Boston and FPA NexGen Local Leader Coordinator David Tassone from Los Angeles. “FPA NexGen has played a critical role in making the next generation of financial planners feel more connected to each other and the profession,” FPA President Skip Schweiss said in a statement. “Those who have served and will serve in NexGen leadership roles are to be commended for taking the time to lead their vibrant community while giving back to the profession.”

Alex. Brown, a division of Raymond James, made a contribution to the charitable arm of the PGA of America, PGA Reach, by hosting its second invitational golf tournament for employees and clients at the Manhattan Woods Golf Club in West Nyack, New York. The nonprofit organization increases access to golf among minorities, veterans and youth, and the event drew more than 70 attendees. Pro golfers Stuart Appleby and Roberto Diaz appeared at the tournament as well. “We are proud to celebrate Alex. Brown’s long history of financial service to clients through this annual event, and we are honored to give back to such an impactful organization as PGA Reach,” Alex. Brown President Haig Ariyan said in a statement.

A 36-year industry veteran currently affiliated with UBS pleaded guilty to investment advisor fraud after FBI investigators said at least eight of James Simpson’s clients wrote him checks totaling $400,000 for a fictitious product. Starting last year, Simpson sold them on what he claimed were “special investment opportunities” while simply spending their money for his own personal benefit, according to prosecutors in the Northern District of Ohio. Sentencing for the 80-year-old resident of Sylvania in the Toledo area is scheduled for Feb. 2.

Mariner Wealth Advisors bought Barley Mill Asset Management, a $700 million RIA in Wilmington, Delaware. Since July, Mariner, based in Overland Park, Kansas, has made eight acquisitions and added nearly $15 billion in assets under advisement. The company said in a statement that it would “continue to seek new opportunities to grow ... in the coming months.”

RBC Wealth Management recruited two wirehouse breakaway teams in one week from Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. In Stuart, Florida, 26-year veteran financial advisor Stephen McGovern and senior registered client associates Donna Childress and Melanie Rivera of the McGovern Wealth Management Group managed $800 million in client assets with Merrill before moving to RBC. “We were attracted to RBC Wealth Management’s entrepreneurial, smaller-firm culture, yet with the backing of a global financial leader,” McGovern said in a statement. In Westport, Connecticut, financial advisors Marco Ventrella and Christopher Ellis of the Ventrella-Ellis Group left Morgan Stanley after building a practice with $450 million in client assets. “We were attracted to RBC Wealth Management’s entrepreneurial culture, local leadership and supportive management approach,” Ventrella said in a statement. RBC has more than 2,100 advisors and $528 billion in client assets.

Private equity-backed regulatory technology and compliance firm ComplySci acquired fellow compliance firm National Regulatory Services as it embarks on an M&A strategy. In June, the firm

received

a growth capital investment of $120 million from K1 Investment Management, and ComplySci’s acquisition of NRS marks the first step in an M&A strategy aimed at gaining as large of a slice of the financial services compliance marketplace as possible. NRS is a more than 30-year-old firm that is well known in the industry for its annual RIA report tracking the massive growth in the number of firms and assets under management, along with other industry trends. “Our acquisition of NRS creates a truly differentiated offering of technology-driven, automated RegTech capabilities, combined with NRS’ hands-on personal compliance guidance based on 30-plus years of experience, insight and technical understanding,” ComplySci CEO Amy Kadomatsu said in a statement. “We’ve actually been working closely with NRS for years referring clients to each other to complement our respective capabilities.”

Investment manager First Affirmative and ESG research and technology firm YourStake teamed up to launch the Values Aligned Direct Index Solution for independent advisors the firms say have been locked out of direct indexing by the cost and required asset minimums. The new service enables advisors to use direct indexing with customized ESG tools, as well as tax-loss harvesting and benchmark flexibility. “I've wanted to bring this level of customization, accessibility and transparency to more advisors and their clients since I joined First Affirmative,” Chief Investment Officer Theresa Gusman said in a statement. “YourStake's tools and data are a crucial piece of the offering, and together, we have the partnerships, structure and tools to make it happen at a lower cost than any other solution available to our clients."

“The logical step once the bitcoin futures market exists is to reevaluate whether it’s suitable to refile the ETF” listing request, said Gabor Gurbacs, director of digital- asset strategy at VanEck.

Interactive Brokers became the latest financial institution to launch a service offering RIAs access to the cryptocurrency market. In partnership with Paxos Trust, which is also

working with MassMutual’s Flourish Crypto

, RIAs can use Interactive Brokers’ custodian platform to trade and manage Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash for clients alongside more traditional portfolio holdings. Commissions run between 0.12% and 0.18% of trade value (depending on monthly volume), which is significantly less than retail platforms, which often charge around 2% to execute crypto trades.

Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz of Ritholtz Wealth Management are collaborating with co-founders of a new media product studio for financial firms called AdvisorCircle on a new annual conference called Future Proof. On Sept. 11-14, 2022, the inaugural event in Huntington Beach, California, is expected to draw more than 3,000 attendees to four landmark hotels and a half-mile-long outdoor space with multiple stages and exhibits. “If you want to stay relevant, you have to be tech-forward and ready to leverage evolving cultural trends,” Brown said in a statement. “It will be the most important event of the year for advisors, investors, asset managers, fintech execs and anyone who wants to be prepared for what’s coming next.”

Lake Point Advisory Group, a fee-only RIA based in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and managing $700 million in client assets, sold to aggregator Mercer Advisors. Advisor Reid Johnson is the founder of the 14-year-old firm, which has 19 employees. “We are a fast-growing firm, and we needed the scale and advisor support necessary to onboard the strong stream of clients we add each month,” Johnson said in a statement. Mercer spans more than 560 advisors and other employees and $32 billion in client assets.

Canadian asset manager and RIA consolidator CI Financial made its first expansion into the Pacific Northwest with an agreement to acquire McCutchen Group, an RIA with $3.4 billion in assets under management from ultrahigh net worth clients. Advisor Matt McCutchen launched the Seattle-based firm in 2007. “McCutchen Group is an exceptional multi-family office RIA with deep client relationships developed through extensive experience serving the complex needs of the ultrahigh net worth segment,” CI CEO Kurt MacAlpine said in a statement. “McCutchen Group further enhances our presence and expertise in this space, which is critical to CI Private Wealth becoming the leading wealth management platform in the U.S. for high net worth and ultrahigh net worth individuals and families.” Upon close, the firm’s U.S. wealth management client assets will reach $83 billion less than two years after CI entered the marketplace.