$3.7B team departs Wells Fargo to open RIA with Pershing

In the end, it was the prospect of an open-architecture platform that helped Mayflower Advisors to go fully independent after 14 years with Wells Fargo.

Lloyd Glazer, his son Larry Glazer, and Steven Dimitriou, cofounders of the $3.7 billion boutique investment and financial advisory practice, brought with them a 35-person team overseeing the assets of roughly 140 full-service clients — including startups, large corporations and nonprofits — and 800 individual households.

One of the biggest factors behind Mayflower’s departure from Wells Fargo’s independent broker-dealer unit was the ability to offer clients a broader variety of tools, Dimitriou explains.

“We recognize there's a trend in the industry towards independence and upgrading to more open architecture, not only the platform for custody and product but also for technology,” he says. “Those are the primary drivers for our move away from Wells Fargo and towards independence. It was both a reaction to our clients’ needs and to our internal needs.”

Boston-based Mayflower — custodied with BNY Mellon Pershing — now has an updated website and has added a customizable mobile app designed to manage portfolio activity and balances, link outside accounts, provide interactive and historic performance reporting and act as a personal vault storage archive. To make this happen, Mayflower partnered with Fusion Financial Partners to develop their technology and operations infrastructure, as well as capital and insurance solutions, according to the firm.

“Now, we actually have the ability to do financial planning with our clients — and charge for that separately — and that certainly helps a lot for our clients who may not have the assets to move to us,” Dimitriou says. “We now have access to software products like eMoney and MoneyGuidePro, whereas before we were using the proprietary product from Wells Fargo.”

Generations

Lloyd Glazer, Mayflower’s most senior founding partner, started his 53-year financial services career in 1967 with DuPont Walston, according to FINRA BrokerCheck records. From there, he worked with Bache & Co. and Bear Stearns before later joining Wainwright & Co. in 1994. After three years with Advest starting in 2002, Lloyd spent the next 14 years with Wells Fargo FiNet, records show.

Lloyd’s son Larry joined the industry 1989 with Wainwright & Co. before following his father to Advest and Wells Fargo, according to BrokerCheck records.

Dimitriou began his career with NYLife Securities in 1991, records show. After spending a year at MFS Fund Distributors in 1994, he worked at Alex. Brown & Sons before joining Wainwright & Co. and has worked alongside the Glazers ever since.

“Mayflower Advisors has always been rooted in relationships,” Lloyd said in a statement. "We view this Mayflower team and our three generations of clients as family, and it's a privilege to help our clients meet their long-term goals — in both good times and challenging ones like we've seen this past year."

As a child, Larry Glazer remembers frequently spending his weekends and holidays putting in time helping around his father’s office, often making copies of research reports. Today, he works directly with many of the same clients his father served when he was just a kid.

“This business is really about understanding what clients want,” Larry says. “What we’ve seen over the years is that there are these big egos in the industry who think they have all the answers. Our clients want someone who's going to listen to them. Financial planning is no longer a value proposition in this industry. You've got to do more for clients.”

Last month, Wells Fargo lost a $1.15 billion team to Stifel in Midland, Michigan.