RIABiz

Mike Sha raised a pile of money that'll come in handy to pay for people and more people.

'Capacity constrained' SigFig suddenly raises unsought $50 million after major VC steps forward

General Atlantic's funding largess comes after $67 million carried the San Francisco robo its first 11 years

Brooke's Note: Your eyes aren't playing tricks. We just published a fairly in-depth article about UBS going live with SigFig last week. Mike Sha's robo-advisor faced tough choices until two wirehouses offered unique partnerships -- and maybe a new business model to boot ...

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New Moves in the Biz

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Ascensus just keeps on hiring -- an ex-FINRA pick for CCO and two more regional VPs

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Pioneering Silicon Valley tech exec joins LPL board of directors

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Joe Duran bets two heads are better than one with Kara Murphy and Bob Landry on board to lead United Capital's investment strategy

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UHNW Atlanta family office takes on ex-GenSpring relationship manager in advance of Florida push

Rich Gill: $20 billion in assets under management in five years [for each of EP Wealth Advisors, the Forbes Family Trust, and MAI Capital Management] is a goal that we discussed and we all think it is doable and I think we're more or less already on the trajectory to get there.

One year on, John Copeland's roll-up growth is slow but expectations remain steadfast for big snowball

The founder of Wealth Partners Capital Group sweet-talked AMG into spinning off WPCG to go after plentiful smaller sellers but courtships can't be rushed

June 18, 2018 — 7:52 PM UTC by Oisin Breen

Brooke's Note: There's the old joke about how when you buy a stock for a short-term trade and it plunges then it becomes a long-term trade. There's something of that phenomenon in many start-ups when their growth off the starting line is ...

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Why Eric Clarke is pressing to give Orion's 1,500 RIAs first crack at BlackRock's Aladdin -- including two that already have feeds

The Orion Advisor Services CEO is working with a $5-trillion AUM asset manager but it boils down to his personal relationship with BlackRock's Brad Stanger

June 15, 2018 — 7:58 PM UTC by Brooke Southall

Brooke's Note: Recently Aladdin has taken on a cocktail-buzz aura. But it wasn't clear to me where it currently intersects with advisors -- i.e. what will need to happen to put the BlackRock analytics machine at RIA fingertips and why there is so much urgency around ...

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Mike Sha: It's way better for our clients if technology investments are amortized across [multiple] large partners as opposed to one-off custom development for any one-off particular partner.

Mike Sha's robo-advisor faced tough choices until two wirehouses offered unique partnerships -- and maybe a new business model to boot

Sure, the SigFig's founder plays by some of UBS's rules in taking its financial backing and giant systems account but beyond that, the freedom to cavort with Wall Street rivals is pretty unlimited.

June 14, 2018 — 3:46 PM UTC by Oisin Breen

Brooke's Note: When I asked people who attended Pershing INSITE 2018 what was said about robo-advisors, they recalled not a word being spoken. Yet just three years ago it was all the buzz at every RIA conference. Back then the robos had few assets or ...

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Kara Murphy is a rare enough talent that United Capital was willing to adjust to her timing.

Joe Duran bets two heads are better than one with Kara Murphy and Bob Landry on board to lead United Capital's investment strategy

The United Capital CEO goes from zero to two investment officers to handle mounting task of managing $22B of AUM and a projected $10B of FinLife assets

June 13, 2018 — 5:42 PM UTC by Brooke Southall

Brooke's Note: You'd think that the rise of passive investing, robo-investing and all that stuff about performance as measured by "wellness" might make chief investment officers obsolete. Yet in still another irony of rising RIA automation, the stock of such humans seems to be on the ...

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Ben Harrison: This is a very conservative number. If we were to continue with hybrid the number would be considerably higher.

The old trick of new math Pershing used to make its RIA assets in custody soar from $200 billion to $615 billion in one year

Citing 'evolution,' the other Jersey City, N.J.-based custodian redefined 'RIA' to leapfrog itself over TD Ameritrade and into the rear view of Fidelity

June 12, 2018 — 5:01 PM UTC by Lisa Shidler

Brooke's Note: In an ideal RIA world, RIA custodians would answer to a board of standards that made sure these companies reported metrics in uniform fashion. That's not happening. So assets-in-custody inflation took place over the years and this $415-billion Pershing mark-up is a case of ...

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Pershing CEO Lisa Dolly flaunts size and software at INSITE 2018

The new leadership continues to push RIAs to see the custodian as less niche but more nimble

June 11, 2018 — 7:33 PM UTC by Guest Columnist Timothy D. Welsh

Brooke's Note: The message from Pershing was always to judge the book not by its industrial cover but by the pages within. But as time passes and the quality of competitors rises, Pershing is necessarily taking on a more refined look. For RIAs, it ...

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M&A Octopus

Black Ops

'Fig'gy Pudding

Follow the sun

Math major

'Capacity constrained' SigFig suddenly raises unsought $50 million after major VC steps forward

New Moves in the Biz

One year on, John Copeland's roll-up growth is slow but expectations remain steadfast for big snowball

Why Eric Clarke is pressing to give Orion's 1,500 RIAs first crack at BlackRock's Aladdin -- including two that already have feeds

Mike Sha's robo-advisor faced tough choices until two wirehouses offered unique partnerships -- and maybe a new business model to boot

Joe Duran bets two heads are better than one with Kara Murphy and Bob Landry on board to lead United Capital's investment strategy

The old trick of new math Pershing used to make its RIA assets in custody soar from $200 billion to $615 billion in one year

Pershing CEO Lisa Dolly flaunts size and software at INSITE 2018

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