Financial advisor Dave Kopyc opted to leave his broker-dealer to gain more independence and new resources under Ladenburg Thalmann’s Securities Service Network and Fidelity, he says.
“Instead of having the shrimp cocktail, we'll have the lobster,” says Kopyc of the new setup for his clients at Saratoga Springs, New York-based Retirement Planning Group, which has three advisors managing $180 million in client assets.
The practice left Ameritas Investment — the No. 36 independent broker-dealer by annual revenue per
Securities America and Triad Advisors, which are the 4,300-advisor network’s two largest IBDs, say they hit record revenue in 2018 in part
”Direct access to senior management” for all of the Knoxville, Tennessee-based firm’s 330 advisors, combined with the “large company resources” of Ladenburg have proven attractive, Wilkinson says. Efficient client services and uncertainty
“Advisors want to choose firms where they know there's stability and they know what the future looks like,” Wilkinson says.
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The network’s largest subsidiary will support fee-only advisors, and one of its smaller firms is targeting five times its level of recruitment from 2018.
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The retirement plan-focused group’s new OSJ had left the No. 1 IBD in 2017 and will grow to 160 advisors under the move.
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Firms’ head counts show how they’re responding to a challenging time in which experts predict the number of advisors to fall in coming years.
A spokeswoman for Ameritas declined to comment on the exit by Kopyc’s team.
Kopyc spent the past decade of his 32-year financial services career with Ameritas before joining Securities Service on Jan. 2, according to FINRA BrokerCheck. The “extremely difficult” process of selecting a new IBD took three or four years, he says.
The upstate practice includes three support staff members and a newly opened second office in nearby Glens Falls. Retirement Planning may open a satellite location in Florida this fall, says Kopyc, who also hosts a weekly radio program. The practice has retained Fidelity as its custodian under its new IBD.
Keeping the Fidelity relationship while getting access to products through Ladenburg like annuities made Securities Service the best fit, according to Kopyc. While only a small percentage of the practice’s assets come from brokerage products, he says advisors who rule out annuities do clients a disservice.
“There should be no biases. You should be able to bring to the table all of the financial services that are out in the arena, without having any kind of biases internally within your organization,” Kopyc says. “You are now showing your bias, as opposed to showing open architecture in a truly independent platform.”
Securities Service did have about 10 fewer advisors at the end of 2018 from a year ago due to the consolidation of a few practices, according to Wilkinson. Ladenburg hasn’t reported its fourth-quarter earnings, but the IBD network’s pretax net income
Wilkinson's team began bulking up Securities Service’s
