For Gerard Rabadeau’s team, wealth management is a family business — literally.
His wife, daughter and son are all part of the six-member Rabadeau Wealth Group.
And when Rabadeau’s team recently quit Wells Fargo to start an independent practice with Raymond James, the wirehouse lost an entire family of advisors that oversaw approximately $325 million.
The Rabadeaus say they were looking for more flexibility in how they served their clients.
“There’s no product pushes, no sales quotas. We wanted to be truly independent of those things,” says Gerard’s daughter, Lauren Rabadeau Bollinger, an advisor on the team. “We did quite a bit of research and we decided Raymond James was the best option for us in the independent model.”
In addition to Gerard and Lauren, the Westfield, New Jersey-based group includes son Russ, also an advisor; fellow advisor Chris Devine; and client associates Eric Ferreira and Lynn Rabadeau, Gerard’s wife.
They’re the latest planners to go independent. A number of wirehouse brokers have opted for that route, with some saying they were drawn to the channel because of what they deemed to be too much bureaucracy at the larger wirehouses.
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Wells Fargo has lost at least 80 brokers managing more than $12 billion in assets before the end of the second quarter.
June 21 -
Industry changes and ongoing bank scandals have tilted the playing field in favor of smaller brokerages.
July 9 -
A recent report about bad incentives for brokers "did not accurately reflect how we do business and serve our clients," said Jon Weiss, head of wealth and investment management.
April 6 -
The FBI has reportedly interviewed employees at the bank’s wealth management unit.
March 16
“I think the wirehouse model makes the advisor something of a cog in the wheel,” Gerard Rabadeau says. “But being independent, we can focus on the client relationship and make sure it’s the best it can be.”
This is Rabadeau’s first career move as an advisor. The former high school teacher started at Prudential Bache Securities in 1983. Prudential was a predecessor firm of Wells Fargo.
Dynasty, Raymond James and Stifel are among the biggest beneficiaries of recent advisor moves.
His two children didn’t initially follow him into the wealth management business.
“Growing up we had an appreciation for making sound financial decisions, but we needed to learn on our own that this was something that we wanted to do,” Russell Rabadeau says.
His sister notes that in college she minored in dance (but majored in business administration). However, finance was always in the air at the Rabadeau house, she says.
“My first stock purchase was Disney. We followed that in the newspaper. So we learned growing up, and we talked a lot about the business,” she says.
They joined the team at Wells Fargo in 2010 and 2015. Devine, an advisor of 24 years, joined Wells Fargo from Smith Barney in 2009, according to FINRA BrokerCheck records.
Gerard Rabadeau was part of the private investment management program at Wells Fargo, he says. And today, the team uses a discretionary management approach to portfolios.
“We intend to continue to manage money in the same manner as we did at Wells Fargo, but we expect to have a little more flexibility over here,” Lauren says.
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman was unavailable for comment on the group’s departure.
