Commonwealth Financial Network plans to hire staff for and open a new corporate headquarters in Cincinnati by June 30, according to Wayne Bloom, CEO of the hybrid registered investment advisor and independent broker-dealer.
The new home office will include the firm's two largest call centers, a technology help desk and service center, Bloom told ThinkAdvisor in an interview last week. The firm — now headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Diego — currently has more than 1,000 employees.
The move to open the Cincinnati base is part of a multi-prong strategy to "keep growing and making sure we provide great service to our advisors," said Bloom, who helped the firm stage its national conference in mid-October near Denver.
It also stands in marked contrast to the office closures and layoffs announced by other industry players over the past few months. Charles Schwab, for instance, closed five offices in October and shrank the size of six facilities; affected employees were reassigned or given remote work. Envestnet and Orion Advisor Solutions recently cut jobs, as did Hightower.
Commonwealth also says it will roll out several product and service upgrades next year that focus on key areas for advisor growth: high-net-worth clients, mergers and acquisitions, and equity funding. The enhancements will "build out already comprehensive product portfolios" in its Wealth Management and Business Solutions groups, the firm said in a statement.
Business Solutions
The Business Solutions group plans to launch Marketplace next year to help advisors with recruiting. The platform aggregates advisor profiles and hiring needs and then finds matches for them.
The Commonwealth team will also make introductions, as well as provide support and financing for dealmaking. This entails connecting Commonwealth financial advisors and advisors not yet affiliated with the firm as part of a new recruiting model, it said.
Business Solutions is also adding options to its Entrepreneurial Capital program, which was launched last year. The effort includes more types of funding via a minority investment in advisor businesses. Commonwealth will provide capital in exchange for a percentage of the firm's earnings on an active or passive basis, it said.
"As far as Entrepreneurial Capital goes," transactions are done "on more of a passive basis where we're taking equity positions in advisors' practices," Bloom explained. "Generally, they've been revenue conversions. They're based on earnings, and then we just convert it to revenue."
