Commonwealth Financial Network has added Legacy Planning Partners, a group with 34 advisors and $1 billion from Securian Financial Services.
“Commonwealth is proud to have earned the trust of a practice with the impressive size and breadth of Legacy Planning …, ” said Andrew Daniels, managing principal of business development of Commonwealth, in a statement.
Legacy has offices in Allentown, Plymouth Meeting and West Chester. Its partners are advisors Jan Graybill, Robert Wermuth, Matthew Kulp and Kevin Donohue.
“Commonwealth delivers access to resources that Legacy Planning was looking for in order to build a world-class financial services firm,” according to Legacy CEO Graybill. “With access to this caliber of new tools and services, we will significantly increase our value proposition to our clients.”
Stifel Update
Stifel Financial says two advisors have joined it from Merrill Lynch: Gregory Schaller and John Zicari of Rochester, New York, who work with $210 million and $40 million in client assets, respectively.
“Merrill advisors are seeing the beauty and simplicity of our open architecture platform, simple compensation plan, and no nickel-and-diming of clients,” according to John Pierce, Stifel’s head of recruitment.
“We are agnostic to fee-based or brokerage. We believe the advisor should choose what is appropriate for his or her clients, not the C-suite,” Pierce added. “When these advisors get here, they find it refreshing to not have to deal with cross-selling pressure or mandated bank referrals. The constant refrain is, ‘I wish I had moved a year ago.’”
Raymond James’ Hires
Raymond James welcomed Mike Gapinski, Thom Huggin and David Thompson to its employee channel in Houston from Morgan Stanley, where they worked with about $357 million in assets.
“Upon visiting the home office, we were drawn to the efficiency and organization at Raymond James,” according to Gapinski, who has 24 years in the business. “Those factors, coupled with the technology and support offerings at the firm, made the decision easy.”