Dynasty Financial Partners last week detailed an ambitious plan to expand its adviser network to between 100 and 150 top-tier registered investment advisers with total assets under management of around $50 billion during the next five years.
Dynasty has hired Loren Morris as its new partner and director of RIA services. Morris, who previously was national head of the consolidator segment for Charles Schwab Advisor Services' strategic business development group, will be responsible for recruiting and hiring new financial adviser teams to Dynasty's technology and investment platform.
The company plans to sign on individual advisers and adviser teams with more than $300 million in assets under management. Morris will serve as the liaison to help them and their clients migrate to the Dynasty platform.
Dynasty President and CEO Shirl Penney said the year-old company's mantra is to provide "best in class" investment products and services to elite RIAs including technology, institutional quality research on money managers, insurance, trust services, capital markets, alternative investments and investment banking.
"With the addition of Loren, we are officially launching the RIA servicing group, but since our core business is servicing RIAs, our entire team has been doing this since our launch in December," Penney said. "Loren will serve as a central point of contact for our advisers to gain access to our expanding offering of services."
Morris described the pipeline of independent advisers as "robust" and said "there has never been a better time than right now to be an advocate for independence."
With so many breakaway brokers and advisers leaving wire houses to carve out their own niche, the pressure is on investment and technology platform providers to offer a blend of compelling products and services for independents.
"Many of the best wealth management advisers are leaving major wire houses for the independent space, and we believe this decentralization of top-tier intellectual capital away from Wall Street will continue for quite some time," Penney said.
Morris said Dynasty's open-architecture platform is designed to supply sophisticated independent advisory firms catering to high-net-worth clients with "the most complete, technologically advanced and conflict-free capabilities" and that it works closely with most of the major RIA custodians so Dynasty can integrate the custody aspect of the relationship in a seamless fashion.
"We also take no equity in the RIA firms in our network, which allows advisers using the Dynasty platform to benefit from all upside enterprise value in their firm, and maintain their own autonomy and brand," he added.
Before his tenure at Charles Schwab, Morris was managing director at RCM Saratoga Capital and also worked as an investment banker in Merrill Lynch's global financial institutions group.
