How exactly Jamie Price got Shannon Reid to exit Raymond James for Osaic. It started with 'five minutes' then each made a big shift

It was a headhunter's last Hail Mary. It landed Shannon Reid as president of Osaic – a job she was not even seeking that had yet to be created.

After repeated rejections, the executive recruiter begged Reid, then at Raymond James, to at least hear out 

Jamie Price, the CEO of rival  Osaic on a job offer.

“It was really through, I think, persistence,” Reid says. “And the headhunter finally saying, Jamie said, ‘You should at least just take  my call.’”

“So I finally took the call,  and, I think I told the headhunter from the very beginning, 'You have about five minutes, because I'm not interested in leaving Raymond James.'

"And, I have never been interested, as you know, I've been at Raymond James for over 18 years. And I think it's an exceptional organization.”

Osaic, formerly Advisor Group, an offshoot of AIG, has about $600 billion of AUA. It's one of the big four or five independent broker-dealers, but miles behind Raymond James, with its $1.7 trillion-plus of assets, never mind leader LPL's $2.3 trillion.

Needless to say, Price made a very effective sales pitch in a short space of time.

Calling an ‘audible’

Reid, who headed RayJay's independent contractor division, will  become Osaic's president on Jan. 12, which was technically not even the initial job offered by Osaic. She was courted as “Head of Advisor Growth and Engagement,” a title that she now also holds.

Reid will move to Phoenix from Florida as part of accepting the big new job.

In a football sense, Price called an “audible,” in making her president when her role had been envisioned more as relationship and sales.

“We actually changed what we were originally looking for, ” he says. “[It was] one of the reasons we gave her the president title.”

Reid said Price's message landed with her based on her observations about where the advice industry is headed.

 "I think we both believe that the wealth management industry is changing, how advisors will have to serve clients is changing. The value the firms bring to those advisors is not the same as what it was. 

"Five years ago, maybe even two years ago, and the way technology and the industry is evolving, that may be different in two years and five years and 10 years.

"I think Osaic, particularly post [completion of its brokerage platform] Journey to One, is very well positioned to take
advantage of that change."

Journey of one

Price also boosted her career by expanding her influence, she says.

“I ran a very big business at Raymond James.  And I had significant influence, but, I ran that business in the silo. In this role, I really have this ability across… a lot of [the organization].”

Much of the Osaic vision rests, Price says, on a radical sense of open architecture, including using third-party clearing services. 

The refinement of the Osaic vision came with an "organizational realignment" initiated in July, designed to better refine roles and responsibilities among the leadership team following the completion of Osaic’s “Journey to One.”  

It was then that Edward Swenson, head of Osaic's RIA platform business departed. The former Dynasty Financial exec landed at $6.5-billion-AUM RFG Advisory in October.

Journey to One was a platform built to be convertible for advisors operating along the spectrum from pure RIA to corporate RIA to IBD rep. 

With all those channels and all the open architecture, the unifying “one” part of it is the data layer itself, Price explains.

"When I say tech stack, it is the digital layer that allows us to do API links openly with any product provider in the
world in the last five years. We just had Schwab in here for two hours.  We are a big partner with them."

Though self-clearing has historically been presented as a big edge of established brokerages, Price says that has recently changed and has become an albatross without extreme volumes of assets to push through.

Open architecture 

What changed, he says, is the proliferation of ETFs and other lower-cost share classes, driving down margins. Clearing requires significant capital reserves and an ongoing investment in technology and operations.

The good news of open architecture, he says, is that it allows him to form myriad API hookups and make partnerships with frenemies – like Schwab Advisor Services.

"We are flexibly operating our business as non-self-clearing, so we can be a very good partner in leveraging all the custody agents, you know, whether that's Schwab Institutional or Fidelity Institutional. 

"We are Pershing's largest [clearing] client.  We're NFS's second-largest [clearing] client. We're Envestnet's largest [outsourced investing] client."

Osaic was also the largest broker-dealer without a president, and now it will have one because a recruiter refused to take “no” for an answer.