Wealth Management
After 16 years with Merrill Lynch, a Bank of America company, Winston-Salem, N.C.-based advisor Christy Campbell has joined Thrive Advisory Group, a unit of Alex. Brown, the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based division of Raymond James. The 21-year veteran, who has about $112 million in assets under management, will be a vice president and senior institutional consultant at the new firm. She will continue her focus on offering financial planning, wealth management, and customized strategies to a variety of clients including individuals, institutions, and small businesses. According to the website, Cambell will primarily concentrate on plan sponsors and investment committees to optimize their defined benefit, defined contribution, and non-qualified plans through tailored strategies that fit each business and its employees. Before Merrill, she previously held positions at BB&T (now Truist Financial Corp.) and Citigroup Global Markets. As part of the announcement, Campbell stated, “The decision to move my practice to Alex. Brown has allowed me to truly focus on individual and institutional client needs, which drives the investment and fiduciary process.” She added, “The systems, data security, technology, efficiencies, and expansive investment platform enable me to build customized strategies that prioritize my client’s goals.”
Finsum: Christy Campbell, a 21-year industry veteran, made the move from Merrill Lynch to Alex. Brown due to the firm’s expansive investment platform that will allow her to build customized strategies that prioritize her client’s goals.
LPL recently announced that two teams of advisors, who serve a combined $275 million in advisory, brokerage, and retirement plan assets have joined LPL’s employee advisor channel, Linsco by LPL Financial. Chris Corcoran CRPC® joins LPL from Merrill Lynch and will be the first tenant in a new Linsco office in Houston, Texas. Matt Jackson and Adam Callender CRPC® join LPL from Truist and will work remotely from Northeast Florida. Corcoran has nearly 25 years of industry experience and works mainly with oil and gas engineers and other self-made clients. Jackson and Callender have a combined 22 years of service, having worked together since 2006. They shifted from the mortgage industry to wealth management in 2010. They specialize in retirement planning, investment solutions, and appropriate risk management strategies. They will also be joined at LPL by Registered Client Service Associate Tiffany Nessmith. Both teams went with Linsco by LPL to enhance the client service experience and have the freedom and flexibility to focus on what’s best for their clients. Linsco serves advisors that are seeking independence, including owning their client relationships and having the flexibility to run their practice, the way they want.
Finsum:Two advisor teams managing a combined $275 million joined Linsco by LPL so they have the freedom and flexibility to focus on what’s best for their clients.
New Age Alpha, which provides equity and fixed-income advisory and sub-advisory services, recently announced the launch of its new direct and custom indexing platform, SPACE. SPACE, which stands for Systematic Personal Asset Customization Engine, is designed to allow the user to build and trade customized alpha or beta index strategies. While SPACE comes with the typical benefits of other direct indexing platforms such as tax optimization, transparency, and ESG screening, it also includes additional features unique to New Age Alpha. For instance, users can build an alpha index strategy by customizing the underlying holdings of an ETF and utilizing factor screens across growth, value, and New Age Alpha's proprietary "Expectation Risk Factor." SPACE offers three primary applications, direct indexing, custom indexing, and prebuilt strategies. The direct indexing application provides the ability to invest directly in the underlying components of well-known indexes and ETFs through an SMA, allowing maximum tax optimization. The custom indexing application provides the ability to build custom, thoughtfully aligned alpha or beta indexes through personalization across various filters, screens, and factors to meet your client's specific needs. The prebuilt strategies offer the ability to invest using any of the over 120 indexes using New Age Alpha’s proprietary Expectation Risk Factor methodology.
Finsum: Asset management firm New Age Alpha launched SPACE, a new direct and custom indexing platform that offers unique features such as the ability to build an alpha index strategy with the firm’s proprietary "Expectation Risk Factor."
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JPMorgan recently announced that they nabbed a $400 million team of financial advisors from Merrill Lynch. According to a press release announcing the move, The Karstaedt Group, which includes wealth advisors Marc Karstaedt, Daniel Zomback, and Raymond Lin and Client Associate Parker Jaques, joins JPMorgan Advisors in New York. JPMorgan says the team will report to regional director Keith Henry. Marc Karstaedt started his career in 1992 with Lehman Brothers and had stints at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley before joining Merrill in 2016. Zomback started in 2018 with AXA Advisors before joining Merrill in 2020. Lin began his career at Merrill in 2021. Merrill also lost an associate market manager to JPMorgan last month, when she left to oversee JPMorgan’s advisors in New York and New Jersey. However, Merrill 2022 had the “strongest year” in more than a decade in terms of hiring. Merrill Wealth Management’s president, Andy Sieg, said in a Q&A session following the firm’s quarterly earnings release two weeks ago, that the global wealth management and consumer-banking division ended the year with 19,273 advisors across its various channels. This was 2.3% higher than last year. Brian Moynihan, chief executive officer of Bank of America, Merrill’s parent company, also said last month that the firm plans to continue hiring financial advisors and private bankers, while JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said earlier this month that his firm is “still in hiring mode.”
Finsum:With JPMorgan still in hiring mode, the firm scooped up a $400 million team from Merrill Lynch, which is also continuing to hire advisors.
Based on the results of a Broadridge survey fielded between September 29th to October 10th, advisors with a marketing strategy brought on an average of 41 new clients, compared to 17 new clients for advisors without a strategy. The survey queried 401 advisors overseeing at least $10 million in client assets. The survey also revealed an increase in marketing, as advisors spent an average of $743 in marketing for each new client and added 23 new clients on average over the past 12 months. Those figures are both up from last year when the average advisor spent $719 per client and gained 21 new customers. Kevin Darlington, general manager, and head of Broadridge Advisor Solutions had this to say about the results, “Having a defined marketing strategy, that is the single biggest differentiator [for] how the advisors that are reaching their growth goals [are] doing it. They're much more confident in reaching their goals, they're acquiring clients, and they're just getting much better ROI on their marketing.” The survey underscores the benefits of a well-executed marketing strategy. Gordon Abel, chief marketing officer of Dynasty Financial Partners, told Financial Advisor IQ, that “Advisors also need to remember that a marketing plan requires careful thought and patience.” He added, “Building awareness means familiarizing potential clients with the advisor's brand and name. They need to understand who you are and what you do.”
Finsum:A recent study revealed that advisors who have a well-executed marketing strategy get 2.4 times more new clients than advisors who don’t.
Amid volatility that wreaked havoc on the market last year, hedge funds lost almost $125 billion worth of assets from performance losses, according to Hedge Fund Research (HFR) data. Investors also pulled their money from hedge funds last year, leading to a net outflow of $55 billion, the largest capital flight from hedge funds since 2016. This is a sharp reversal from 2021 when hedge funds saw $15 billion in net inflows. Volatility in the markets was triggered by high inflation, interest rate hikes, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Investors pulled $40.4 billion out of hedge funds that buy and sell stocks, a strategy that posted the worst performance for the year, losing $112.5 billion. Even macro funds that saw strong performance last year dealt with outflows. Institutional investors pulled $15 billion from these funds, according to HFR. In fact, the only hedge fund strategy that did see an increase in money was event-driven mergers and acquisition and credit funds that saw $4.3 billion in inflows. It was a tough year for performance overall for the hedge fund industry, as the HFRI 500 Fund Weighted Composite Index fell 4.2%. The index tracks many of the largest global hedge funds, marking the worst performance since 2018.
Finsum:The hedge fund industry lost $125 billion last year amid market volatility triggered by high inflation, interest rate hikes, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.