Brooke’s Note: This was a fun story to report on because it has a surprising twist. It involves one of the fastest-growing RIAs in Rehmann Financial and a broker-dealer in Royal Alliance that seemed to be more likely to lose a hot RIA than to gain one. It’s about how these two companies seemingly headed in two different directions formed a promising marriage. The two articles that I wrote previously about the AIG Advisor Group subsidiary seemed to fit with statistics showing steady attrition of advisors from the company. These articles included: New RIA with a Royal touch about Barry Glassman taking his assets to Schwab Advisor Services and Why a Royal Alliance champion gave up the cause after AIG made changes which was about Jim Warren moving his practice to Geneos Wealth Management, following in the path of other Royal Alliance advisors. Elizabeth MacBride wrote an article about a loyal Royal Alliance advisor, Steve Cassaday entitled: A breakaway story, old-school style
The last few times Royal Alliance landed in the media spotlight, it was for the kinds of news stories make executives cringe: several big advisors — and dozens of smaller ones — departed Royal Alliance for other broker-dealers in recent years.
The departures were helped along by the turmoil surrounding Royal Alliance’s parent company, AIG. Some advisors said also that the culture of Royal Alliance had grown too corporate under the big insurer’s ownership.
Through this period of attrition, New York-based Royal Alliance stuck by its guns, with a message that it is, for instance, the broker-dealer to go to for forming a large branch office.
Daily email alert
Subscribe via RSS
RIABiz on Twitter