Altruist is CTO-less, for now, quasi-intentionally, it says • Ex-rival exec hired to jumpstart cross-selling Orion products to enterprise clients • BlackRock tops Grayscale • Facet outsources estate plans • Advyzon profits off Goldman exodus • Dan Wiener's RIA has new CEO • CFP count tops 100k

Nachiket Shiralkar checked out of Altruist and checked into Hotel Engine, but not before leaving the emerging RIA custodian with a brand known for its digital technology.

The Culver City, Calif. RIA custodian's CTO joined Altruist as an upstart nearly three and a half years ago when it was in full build-out mode. 

His departure represents a planned shift, emphasizing growth and scale, according to CEO Jason Wenk.

“It was a mutual decision as it's pretty common in startups for leaders to serve three-to-five years. Nachiket was here about three-and-a-half," Wenk says, via email.

“[He] built an awesome team, so while we're searching for our next CTO, we haven't skipped a beat.

“[A] company [also] needs change as they grow and scale, and top talent is always being recruited, which tends to result in great opportunities for talented people, both outgoing and incoming,” Wenk adds.

Altruist raised $169 million in fresh venture capital last month from Iconiq, known as “Mark Zuckerberg's RIA” because his ex-Morgan Stanley stockbroker founded it. See: Division of $80-billion RIA leads a $169 million round and takes a 10% Altruist stake.

A refreshed technology strategy might be in order for Altruist to take on Iconiq's or other big firms' assets – like Creative Planning – which are casting about for alternatives to Schwab, Fidelity and Pershing. See: Peter Mallouk is exploring new RIA custody vendor for his $300-billion firm, despite new Fidelity referral deal; this time around upstart brands are in the running

Orion goes deep to solve tech bundle sales quandary

Orion Advisor Solutions has hired the ultimate RIA outsider to solve its gaping insider sales challenge – namely, only one-in-five advisors in the Orion family are sold on a larger Orion software bundle.

The Omaha, Neb., bundler of RIA software and investments made Trevor Noble senior vice president for national accounts. 

But he may never need to make a cold call – as long as he can vouch for Orion over vendors he knows from the inside out.

The San Diego-based sales veteran of SEI, LPL, DFA, Parametric and TD Ameritrade (TDA) is ready, in particular, to convince enterprise clients that the grass is greener inside Orion.

“A significant aspect of the [Noble] role involves cross-selling,” a spokeswoman explains.

Orion bought Redtail in June two years ago, with high hopes of upselling from merely CRM use. 

Noble's appointment follows Orion's late May hire of Ron Pruitt as president of its wealth management unit. 

Pruitt is also a certified outsider, having sold his company, Placemark, to Orion's top rival. He then stayed on for three years, ending in 2017.

BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust wins Bitcoin crown

BlackRock is now the king of Bitcoin, after the value of assets managed by its iShares Bitcoin Trust, last week, topped the long-standing top-dog, Grayscale.

Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein stepped down, May 20, after making a fateful gamble that appears to have been less than ideal.

He slow-walked a price decrease after BlackRock, Fidelity and others jumped into the fray with far cheaper alternatives.

Prior to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval earlier this year of spot Bitcoin ETFs, Grayscale's lead looked unassailable.

But it took BlackRock just six months to jump ahead with $21 billion of AUM managed by its fund, compared to the $20.3 billion managed by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. See: Gary Gensler post-exchange listing approval for Bitcoin ETF includes a stark '1940 Act' warning to RIAs not to read too much tolerance into it

Waiving fees

Grayscale only initially dropped its 200-basis-point ETF fee to 150 basis points as it converted its closed end fund to an ETF.

Grayscale reaped $540 million annually on $27 billion of assets with a fee of two percent and $405 million on that same amount of AUM at the new 1.5% fee. 

Had it immediately dropped its fees to 50-basis-points, the revenues, hypothetically, would drop staggeringly to $135 million.

Fidelity, Wisdom Tree Invesco and BlackRock are all waiving their fees for six months, and then only levying fees in the range of 25- to 39-basis-points.

Grayscale launched a lower-fee – 15 basis points, compared to 150 basis points – Bitcoin ETF in late April in a bid to stem months of GBTC outflows in excess of a billion dollars.

Facet Wealth taps partner for estate planning duties

Facet Wealth has outsourced its estate planning service to Wealth.com for customers paying its maximum fees of $6,000 a year.

The Baltimore City flat-fee financial planning vendor brought estate planning in-house in 2021 as part of a bid to boost its then roughly $15 million revenues. 

Today, it posts an estimated $40 million in revenues – a 167% increase in just three years. See: Facet Wealth is doubling in size every six months.

Goldman spawns another top exec -- for another firm

RIA outsourcer Advyzon just nabbed one of the latest executives to flee Goldman Sachs' RIA custodian.

Scott Smith was appointed the new chief revenue officer of its TAMP, Advyzon Investment Management.

Smith spent three-and-a-half years at Goldman’s often floundering custody arm as its head of central division RIA custody sales. That followed multi-year stints at BNY Mellon Pershing, Envestnet, Fidelity Institutional, Schwab Advisor Service, and TD Ameritrade. 

Smith joined Advyzon in Chicago June 4. See: Kartik Srinivasan bounces back at Advyzon after highly publicized Schwab layoff.

“I'm looking forward to helping expand Advyzon’s investment management business,” he says, via email.

Carson rebuffs sex assault claims in lawsuit

Carson Group has rejected former chief marketing officer, Mary Kate Gulick's claims of discrimination and retaliation over its handling of an allegation that an employee sexually assaulted a 2022 conference attendee.

In a May 23 filing, it denied the allegations and moved to dismiss Gulick's suit, which includes a claim company founder Ron Carson opted to retain the accused employee. 

Carson Group fired Gulick in June 2023, according to her suit. See: New Carson CEO is caught in classic Catch-22 as villain and white knight in alleged sex assault suit.

Knight takes reins at RWA Wealth Partners; Ramos exits

RWA Wealth Partners has a new CEO, Michelle Knight – its second in two years.

The $15 billion of managed assets RIA in Newton, Mass., appointed the former Ropes Wealth Advisors CEO, June 3, to replace outgoing Mario Ramos. 

Better known to many, prior to a merger, as the Daniel Wiener co-founded Adviser Investments, RWA is the merged business of Adviser Investments, Ropes and Polaris Wealth. See: Roll-up, roll-up the Ropes.

It also just overhauled its senior leadership with five new appointments, and declared the merger complete.

"A new leader, a new vision, a new day," says Wiener on LinkedIn.

Thrivent forged paper trail leads to $325K FINRA fine

At least 15 advisors at Thrivent Investment Management took the maxim ‘nobody likes paperwork’ so seriously, FINRA fined their employer $325,000.

The Minneapolis IBD just settled a case with the brokerage regulator, after a dozen-plus of its reps allegedly forged over 120 customer signatures on 260 documents, since 2017, although no client was harmed, according to FINRA.

Don't overlook overseas stocks for long-term gains

Wealthfront is telling its investors they could be better off investing a portion of their assets in non-US stocks to diversify and potentially net higher returns.

Its argument: overseas shares are currently cheaper, and on a 10-year basis, international stocks outperformed domestic stocks four out of ten times.

The Palo Alto, Calif robo-advisor's highest risk ‘classic’ portfolio allocates 39% to overseas stocks and 45% domestically. 

Its lowest risk portfolio allocates just 6% to overseas stocks and 18% to domestic stocks.

CFP Board hits milestone – 100,000-plus CFP members

Simone Lee just secured her CFP mark and hit a benchmark – the 100,000th certified financial planner (CFP) in the nation. 

The CFP Board, which issues the accreditation, now has 100,000 fee-paying members; as a result, it makes a cool $45.5 million in annual revenues off member fees, alone.

Since 2007, the number of CFP professionals in the U.S. has nearly doubled, from just over 50,000 to today's 100,538 CFP professionals.