A San Diego-based team with about $215 million in managed assets is the latest to leave Osaic for LPL Financial.
Paul Neves and Darrin Santos, the founding partners of FSI Wealth Management, are joining LPL from Securities America, one of the eight legacy Advisor Group broker/dealers being rolled up under the Osaic brand.
Neves and Santos teamed up in 1995 to build the firm in Old Town, San Diego, along with two support employees. They were affiliated with Securities America the entire time, but the duo decided to make a change when the rebranding was imminent, according to LPL.
“We were at an impasse with our business and thought to ourselves, ‘Do we want to wait and see what happens next or go somewhere that’s already proven?’” Neves said.
The team eventually opted for LPL, citing the independence and tech access the move would offer. Santos said the partnership would give clients a “simplified online experience.”
Advisor Group announced in April last year it would merge its multi-brand network (and 11,000 affiliated advisors) under a single name, unveiling Osaic as the choice several months later.
In addition to Securities America, the eight b/ds included American Portfolios, FSC Securities, Infinex Investments, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial, Triad Advisors and Woodbury Financial Services, with plans to integrate them all within two years. Royal Alliance, SagePoint, Woodbury and FSC have already been converted, and Infinex has become “Osaic Institutions,” according to an Osaic spokesperson.
Earlier this month, Osaic closed on its acquisition of Lincoln Financial’s $115 billion wealth business, announced late last year. Osaic onboarded more than 1,400 advisors as part of the deal.
But since the start of the year, several advisors have departed Osaic ahead of the integrations. In February, LPL added the $520 million Wisconsin-based Equity Design Group, previously affiliated with SagePoint.
According to firm co-founder Jason Hohenstein, the move to the Osaic brand added a “significant layer of confusion” for clients, and the firm has felt shuffled around in a run of numerous private equity owners since 2011.
“We had no idea which direction Osaic is going,” he said.
Cubby Bice, the founder of North Carolina-based Bice Wealth Management who also left in February, shared Hohenstein’s frustration. He told WealthManagement.com he faced an “untenable” situation at Osaic, alleging the firm prioritized scale while neglecting advisors’ back-office support.
“The fact that they are private equity owned and trying to scale up as quickly as possible to go public by combining multiple broker/dealers to increase revenues and earnings, while also not taking care of advisor needs in regards to back-office support or technology is what made the situation untenable,” he said.
A number of advisors have also departed Lincoln for LPL in the wake of that acquisition, including Nolan Venable, a Louisiana-based advisor with a $150 million team, and RFS Financial Securities, a $140 million AUM team from Texas, who joined LPL from Lincoln in March.
Brian Pflaum, a Birmingham, Ala.-based advisor with $345 million in assets, decided to join LPL from Lincoln after the Osaic sale, as did the Strategic Wealth Partners team, a Dallas-based group led by owner Ryan Rayburn managing about $860 million in client assets.
The largest departure thus far is Pilot Financial, a Greensboro, N.C.-based network with 105 advisors and $4.6 billion in assets under management. The firm decided to move from Lincoln to LPL earlier this month. Pilot Financial was founded in 2001 after a series of mergers and has been affiliated with Lincoln ever since. The firm will become an LPL office of supervisory jurisdiction.
“We are looking to grow our network thoughtfully and believe that working with LPL puts us on a better trajectory to attract like-minded, quality advisors to Pilot Financial,” Greg Smith, a partner with the firm, said about the deal.
