Just a week after wrapping up its annual INSITE conference in Nashville, BNY Pershing has laid off its business advisory team and about half a dozen people in its products group, sources said. The business consulting team was responsible for helping RIA clients grow their businesses, while the product team delivers advisor products related to cash management, lending, retirement, finance, customer portals and 529 plans. That team also consults with advisors on those products.
“We regularly review our operating model to ensure we are built with the right mix of skills and talent to best serve our clients,” a BNY spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to actively hire.”
The firm has also updated its brand to use BNY Pershing as its moniker, the spokesman said. This largely reflects the larger firm's strategy to strengthen integrations between its clearing and custody unit, its asset management division and the 240-year-old bank.
The business consulting team consisted of about six to seven people, the sources said, including Julie Ann D'Antuono Small, a senior vice president of business consulting who had been with Pershing since March 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile . Before that, she founded and ran a consulting practice to support early-stage startups. She was at Fidelity for 16 years before that, serving as vice president of business development and consulting before leaving.
The layoffs also affected Jeff Ramsey, who had been a business consultant at Pershing since May 2022, according to LinkedIn. Previously, he was chief operating officer and chief compliance officer at HFS Wealth Management.
Andrew Hirschler, a senior practice management consultant at Pershing, was also fired. He joined Pershing in July 2015 and previously served as director and head of advisory education and financial markets at UBS Wealth Management.
Small, Ramsey and Hirschler did not return requests for comment before publication.
Pershing's business consulting team was most recently led by Janet Kelly, who retired in March after 11 years with the company, according to her LinkedIn page. She succeeds William Bruckner, who served as head of advisory and implementation, wealth solutions. He was fired last September.
Prior to Bruckner, Lisa Crafford served as head of business consulting. She and Technology Consulting Director Morgan McGovern left last June AND joined Karl Heckenberg's new equity investment firm focused on wealth managementConstellation Wealth Capital, late last year.
Last week, Pershing X introduced some improvements on its multi-custody wealth management platform, Wove. Wove was discovered for the first time at last year's INSITE Conference and has been in development ever since The Pershing X was created at the end of 2021.
Tim Welsh, president, CEO and founder of Nexus Strategy, said it appears the firm's Wove strategy is behind development and, given development costs, consuming the firm's resources.
“It's the greatest anchor of all time — Wove — around Pershing's neck,” he said. “They had to have all hands on deck to bring Wove to market, and it's still not there.”