Think of Commonwealth Financial Network, and practice management guru Joni Youngwirth probably comes to mind, or behavioral specialist Kol Birke, or maybe even Wayne Bloom, Red Sox fanatic and CEO of the Waltham, Mass.-based broker-dealer giant.
One other area, wealth management, is of course a critical offering, and one that's receiving more attention of late.
"Wealth management in general involves a lot of different components, so our wealth management platform involves a lot of different areas; asset management, investment research, annuity research, retirement consulting and advanced planning," explains vice president Gavin Morrissey, who is responsible for all as well coordinating interdepartmental efforts across the firm's platform. (He has also contributed to ThinkAdvisor).
Noting the broad yet consultative nature of the group, he says that it tries to be proactive about conditions or events that would affect the client's portfolio.
"Of course, we're reactive as well," he adds. "When our advisors bring us a case, we are comprehensive and collaborative and have the full team working on it and approaching it from different angles, so nothing happens by itself or in a silo."
The firm claims 1,500 recurring fee advisors, but Morrissey emphasizes that how an advisor (or rep) affiliates with Commonwealth "will not affect how we serve you, recognizing there are some compliance issues, of course."
Morrissey graduated from Lafayette College with a major in economics before earning a law degree at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and his LLM in taxation at the University of San Diego School of Law. With Commonwealth for the past 15 years, he's worked in various departments, gaining what he says is a broad-based knowledge of the internal workings of a full-service broker-dealer. This allows him to provide a bridge between wealth management concepts and operational implementation.
