With Eye on Advisors, Fidelity Restructures Institutional Arm

Fidelity Investments announced Wednesday that it is planning to overhaul its institutional arm to increase engagement with advisors.

Fidelity Institutional has more than $1.1 trillion in assets under administration within its clearing and custody units.

“Through our ongoing dialogue with clients, we recognized that we could deliver a deeper level of engagement in the custody and clearing industry by better leveraging our scale and breadth of expertise,” Gerard McGraw, the president of Fidelity Institutional, said in a press release. "We are committed to delivering against our clients’ immediate needs, but also looking ahead to help them navigate some of the challenges and opportunities we expect they will face in the future.”

The heads of Fidelity’s custody and clearing units, Michael Durbin, president of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, and Sanjiv Mirchandani, president of National Financial, will oversee the new organizational structure.

Bobbi Masiello, executive vice president and head of relationship management for Fidelity’s clearing business, will run the broker-dealers group, which will focus on insurance, independent and institutional broker-dealer firms.

Michael Norton, senior vice president for client experience supporting Fidelity’s clearing clients, will lead the banks group , which will focus on “banks’ converging product and technology needs across custody and clearing.”

Bob Oros, executive vice president of sales and relationship management in Fidelity’s custody business, will continue to head RIA sales and relationship management. Fidelity said that RIAs continue to be the fastest-growing segment in the financial advice industry.

Fidelity will also dedicate a team to strategic acquirers and professional asset managers. Robert Evans, who was a regional senior vice president in the RIA custody unit for seven years, will lead this team and continue to report to Oros.

Meg Kelleher, executive vice president for sales and relationship management in Fidelity’s custody business, overseeing the trust and third-party adminstrators market, will lead the retirement advisors and administrators group. The group will promote the services of 401(k) retirement plan recordkeepers and “engage more effectively with advisors who sell retirement plans.”

To strengthen its custody and clearing offering, Fidelity will integrate its technology platform. By centralizing this platform, Fidelity said it hopes “to better deploy its significant technology expertise, while remaining focused on the three core audiences it serves in the financial advice market: home offices, advisors and their investor clients.”