Industry veteran aims to build 30-advisor office under Securian

Four months after opening its first office in a major market, Securian Financial tapped a 25-year industry veteran to launch its second one.

Martina Jimenez Sperry aims to build a team of 30 to 40 advisors over the next three years after opening Atlanta-based Centurio Wealth in July, she said in an interview. She left the Prudential broker-dealer, Pruco Securities, after helping to lead the firm’s recruiting of diverse candidates as an associate managing director. She’s also been an advisor for 10 years.

“The move to Securian is about building something brand new and having the opportunity to do it,” says Jimenez Sperry. “The main thing is bringing the right talent to serve our community the right way.”

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Representatives for Prudential declined to comment on her departure.

Securian has more than 1,200 advisors who manage about $20 billion in assets under management, according to Tony Martins, Securian’s vice president of career distribution. The IBD’s approach is to focus on “investment in leadership and access to markets,” he says.

“As an industry we need to do a better job of that,” Martins says. “Other industries have done a better job with female leaders, with leaders of color. We need to do our part.”

Securian Financial

Jimenez Sperry, who is Dominican American, serves on NAIFA’s diversity and inclusion task force. Firms aiming to boost the severely underrepresented ranks of Black and Latino advisors must be “willing and ready to execute a strategy” of supporting professionals and clients from diverse backgrounds, she says.

The number of Black or Latino CFPs surged by 12% year-over-year in 2019 to 3,259 advisors, which is still fewer than 4% of the industry’s planners. The groups comprise some 30% of the U.S. population.

“When you look at the industry, the organizations that have diversified their field force are doing really well and that exposure helps everybody,” Jimenez Sperry says. “We’re going to look more like the diversity that is out there.”