Hedged in by tech barriers, firm founders leave Wells Fargo to start RIA

When the founders of Gryphon Wealth left Wells Fargo to form their own RIA, they were seeking to shed their brokerage business and go fee-only while establishing a clearer path to handing their firm down to the next group of owners.

Even more than that, though, they wanted the sort of autonomy needed to try out new technologies. Jason Hyrne, CEO and chief investment officer of Gryphon Wealth, said he and his colleagues were particularly eager to bring a tax-planning program that would rely on IRS information imported with clients' consent.

But at Wells Fargo, there were too many bureaucratic hurdles to cross.

"It's just never going to move that quickly," Hyrne said. "That created challenges for us wanting to really take it to the next level, and do that now versus five years from now."

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Gryphon Wealth left Wells Fargo about a month ago, taking its 22 employees to set itself up as a registered investment advisory with roughly $3.1 billion in assets under administration in Jacksonville, Florida. Hyrne said a large firm like Wells Fargo is always going to struggle to be at the cutting-edge with technology.

"There are some advantages to big firms, but there are also some disadvantages, and that's one of them," he said. "And so I think we're at this point in time where we're uniquely positioned in that, as a $3.1 billion RIA, we have scale, but we're also still small enough and nimble enough to move and use some of these new technologies and implement those."

But that's not to say Gryphon Wealth is abandoning Wells Fargo entirely. It's keeping Wells Fargo Clearing Services as a custodian to safeguard client assets. That relationship brings in TradePMR, a provider of technology support to RIAs that also relies on Wells Fargo Clearing for custodial services. TradePMR not only recently extended its contractual relationship with Wells Fargo Clearing until 2032, but it was also acquired in 2024 by the online brokerage Robinhood Markets.

Both the Wells Fargo and Robinhood connections were appealing, Hyrne said.

"The consistency of staying with Wells Fargo First Clearing as the custodian means clients are still able to access accounts online through Wells Fargo Online, still have the same account numbers, not have to redo paperwork," Hyrne said.

As for Robinhood, he looks to the firm famous for introducing commission-free trading to help keep Gryphon Wealth at the forefront of technological change.

"I see it almost as a barbell," Hyrne said. "On one side, we've got the huge behemoth that's Wells Fargo. From a safety and security standpoint, we can just continue using that. And then at some point there may be a service, or something else that we want to pull in from this cutting-edge side of the barbell with TradePMR."

Rick Rummage, the CEO of the recruiting firm The Rummage Group, said that for most advisors who leave a wirehouse or similar firm, an independent broker-dealer like Raymond James, Ameriprise or Wells Fargo's FiNet will be a perfectly good home. They gain greater freedom to run their business as they see fit but also have the advantage of being attached to a household name that will help attract clients.

But there are maybe 10% to 20% of advisors whom Rummage refers to as "cowboys."

"The truth is that 80% or 90% of advisors are all doing the same things and are happy with the basic technologies and operating procedures at most firms," Rummage said. "But there is 10% to 20% of them that want to do something really unique and use technologies that are custom-built for them, and the big-box independent firms aren't going to be their happiest homes."

Robb Baldwin, the founder and general manager of TradePMR, said in a statement that more benefits from the firm's continued partnership with Wells Fargo Clearing will be announced at its annual Synergy conference in the first week of June in Washington, D.C.

"TradePMR has a long-standing relationship with Wells Fargo to support advisors who want to embrace the RIA model," he said.

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The desire to go fee-only and have a plan for passing the business down

Like many advisory firms registered solely with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gryphon Wealth has committed itself to being "fee-only" — meaning all of its income will be derived from fees charged for managing assets and performing other services. Hyrne said only about 3% of the firm's business under Wells had come from brokerage commissions and similar revenue not allowed under the fee-only designation.

"So it wasn't a big lift for us from a business standpoint to go fee-only," Hyrne said. "We just felt like that brought a tremendous amount of transparency and alignment with the client."

Another big motivator to set up an RIA was Hyrne's and his fellow founder Jeffrey Wyatt's desire to be able to eventually pass Gryphon Wealth down to employees. Along with more autonomy to run their business as they want, advisors who go independent often gain a greater say in what happens to their firm when they retire.

"I stole this phrase from someone else, but one of the reasons we did what we did is that we would like Griffin Wealth to be a forever firm, and potentially someday could be owned by the employees and go well beyond Jeff and Jason," Wyatt said.

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How Gryphon wealth was founded and how it may tap Robinhood to grow

Gryphon Wealth's roots are in a partnership formed between Hyrne and Wyatt while they were both at Wachovia, which was purchased by Wells Fargo in 2008 amid the global financial collapse. Gryphon Wealth was born in 2023 when Hyrne, Wyatt and others on the team moved over to Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, or FiNet, the firm's channel for advisors working as independent contractors rather than as direct employees.

The firm has 22 employees, including a full-time estate-planning attorney. Hyrne said he views Gryphon Wealth as a "quasi-multifamily office," offering a gamut of services from investment analysis to wealth planning. It works with roughly 700 households. The minimum in investable assets they need is $1 million, although Hyrne said most of Gryphon Wealth's clients have at least $5 million.

Hyrne said one other possible advantage of TradePMR's recent acquisition by Robinhood remains "to be determined" for Gryphon Wealth. Robinhood announced in March that it was starting a referral network that users of its online trading systems could use to be introduced to RIAs.

The referral network is still in its early days. But Hyrne is hopeful that it will eventually provide yet another source of new business for his new RIA.

"We want to make sure it's the right clients and the right fit," Hyrne said. "But we would love to build that relationship and see that growth from that side of it."