Page 30 - Investment Advisor November 2022

Executive Leadership

performance inconsistencies, error-prone manual work and Rodolfo “Rudy” Rake, formerly a managing director at
compliance issues, it explains. Morgan Stanley, joined as head of Middle Market, and Bohn
Through this initiative, the firm says it has “significantly Vergari came on board from Brownstone Investment Group to
enhanced advisor-managed sleeves in [the] MyVest Strategic serve as the firm’s director of Capital Markets Sales & Trading.
Portfolio System and extended the configuration of shared Paul Sullivan, who spent 34 years with Merrill Lynch, is sup-
discretion between the home office and advisors.” As a result, porting the firm’s advisors and teams on the East Coast as a
advisors and their team members can customize portfolios regional managing director. From April 2021 through April
more easily, maintain guardrails, configure a spectrum of dis- 2022, the firm added more than 15 advisor teams with close to
cretion and work with specialists within a role-based system $10 billion in client assets.
(like chief investment officers), it explains.
Snowden Lane Partners
Northwestern Mutual The firm, a hybrid RIA, added over 35
Northwestern Mutual employees, 25 of whom are financial advi-
has introduced a proprietary planning platform — PX — to sors, across 13 new advisory teams, since
combine permanent life insurance with investments and 2020. It says it also added $2.5 billion of new client assets in
annuities. Using the PX platform, advisors can model the 2021 to push its current total client assets over $9 billion. Its
accumulated value of risk-based products as part of a client’s employee boutique model provides “ownership, and freedom
projected net worth in retirement, the firm says. “With PX’s for advisors to demonstrate their expertise and manage their
retirement planning capability, advisors can run multiple practice,” the firm explains.
scenarios to compare different paths toward clients’ goals,” Snowden Lane decided to geographically diversify its
it explains. senior leadership team in the past year and moved two
Over the past year, the firm says it has added enhance- senior partners and managing directors, Alison Burkett
ments to the PX platform, including: modeling long-term care, and Joe Raieta, to its offices in San Diego, California, and
permanent disabilities and education savings alternatives; Coral Gables, Florida, respectively. Burkett heads Enterprise
advanced probability analysis; transfers including Roth con- Development, while Raieta leads Investment Solutions.
versions; and blended withdrawals in retirement. Burkett and Raieta are part of the firm’s seven-person
executive committee.
Peak Reps LLC
Peak Reps, the holding company for Peak SS&C Black Diamond
Brokerage Services, Blackridge Asset The SS&C Black Diamond Wealth
Management and Top Advisors Group, recently developed and Platform team recently released the Client View command
introduced its Comprehensive Online Marketing Program. center to consolidate the platform’s tools. This means advi-
Part of the initiative involved expanding its capabilities and sors have “a single application to quickly switch between cli-
security features to accommodate website hosting at low to no ent relationships, see insights, take action and provide timely,
costs and with nominal hosting fees, offering new themes and proactive communication full of meaningful information,” the
templates for website layouts and functionality options, and firm says.
investing in a well-equipped production studio for advisors to Client View includes investments, reporting, billing, rebal-
record training videos, podcasts and online education. ancing, financial plans and communications. It gives advisors
Other measures have focused on helping advisors optimize access to commission-free insurance products, tools and annu-
their social-media pages, take advantage of its content library ity-specific data; a customizable dashboard; the ability to share
in their social-media marketing, build landing pages to capture reports directly with client timeline; and integration with the
lead-gen information and metrics, create content calendars DocuSign workflow.
and better understand metrics reporting.
Wealth Enhancement Group
Sanctuary Wealth After doubling assets to $26 bil-
Sanctuary Wealth has recent- lion in 2020, the RIA firm says
ly moved to “add experience, it recently did it again — to
expertise and an extensive knowledge base to its executive its current $55 billion. Meanwhile, CEO Jeff Dekko has
team,” it says. New leaders include Jeff Kilburg, the founder grown the size of its senior management team to facili-
of KKM Financial, who is serving as its chief investment tate further expansion. For instance, Chief Growth Officer
officer and portfolio manager and is expanding Sanctuary’s Eric Weiss joined this year, and A. Charles Thomas of
Investment Solutions group, which provides outsourced chief Meta and Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor became WEG
investment officer services and other services. board members. WEG’s executive team leads more than

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