Commonwealth Financial Network is attracting two Long Island-based firms with a total of more than $495 million in assets under management from Osaic.
Both Full Spectrum Financial Solutions and NXT Stage Financial Services were affiliated with Securities America before that firm was integrated into Osaic, the broker/dealer network formerly known as Advisor Group. Both firms are located in Jericho, NY
Becca Hajjar, a managing director and head of business development at Commonwealth, said it was a “special honour” for firms to choose Commonwealth.
“This is a great example of how we can make the process easy for two firms moving side-by-side,” Hajjar said in a statement.
Both firms were founded in the early 1990s, and although they operate as separate enterprises, the two teams share office space. Full Spectrum Advisors include Pat Lanotte, Christopher Jones and Paul Michaluk, who advise over $329 million in assets and focus on working with clients near or in their retirement. NXT Phase manages approximately $166 million and includes advisors John Carbonara and Michael Murray, who specialize in working with educators on a variety of issues, including retirement planning advice.
According to Commonwealth, the two firms decided to move together and made a site visit to Commonwealth's Waltham, Mass., headquarters. Lanotte said in a statement that the visit helped seal the deal by seeing how Commonealth's advanced planning, estate planning, marketing and other teams “connected the dots” for his advisors.
Commonwealth Financial Network is an independent broker/dealer with more than $296 million in assets; in September, the firm announced that it had partnered with Vestwell to launch a new joint employer plan, expanding its existing partnership with Vestwell and making the new plan available through the firm's more than 2,000 advisors.
Commonwealth's drew several other teams from Osaic throughout the year, including Terramar Estatea California-based team with more than $300 million in assets under management. Terramar became an office of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJ) for the Commonwealth after fulfilling the same role for SagePoint Financial (now Osaic) for more than two decades. In September, the Commonwealth also withdrew Tempe, Ariz.-based Krueger Financial Services. 630 million dollars from Osaiku.
The moves are the latest of many departures from Osaic since the firm rebranded last year and began merging its eight legacy broker/dealers (including Securities America and SagePoint) into one entity.
Osaic also closed a deal to buy Lincoln Financial's $115 billion asset management business, which aims to include around 1,400 advisers. But following those changes, several advisers have left Osaic for other firms, including Commonwealth and LPL Financial.
IN or WealthManagement.com interview this fallOsaic CEO Jamie Price said Osaic's rate of churn following the rebranding was “fair” to its annual forecasts and disputed claims by some former Osaic advisers who said the firm's consolidation and private equity backing encouraged them to leave (Reverence Capital Partners owns the firm).
Price said the idea that Reverence would dictate the firm's plans for its legacy eb/ds integration was a “misnomer” and that it wouldn't make sense for Reverence to squeeze business costs when so many of them are variable .
“You're never going to build a very good wealth management business if that's what you've been doing,” Price said.