When Frank Maiorano left Nuveen Investments in the wake of its acquisition by Madison Dearborn Partners in 2007, he had two thoughts in mind.

He didn’t want to rush into his next job for the sake of employment and – when he took a job – he wanted to stay in the thick of the RIA business.

Maiorano took a year off before accepting a job as CEO of Trust Company of America. Now as Maiorano begins life [he arrived two weeks ago] in Denver, Colo., he believes that he has landed in just the position he was seeking. See: Frank Maiorano takes the helm at Trust Company of America

Trust Company is small enough to have entrepreneurial edge, but many of the kinks have already been worked out on its platform as his predecessor, Terry Reitan, passes the torch. See: CEO Terry Reitan retires from Trust Company of America

Move the needle

“It’s very rare to join a custodian with a full-fledged platform but I still have the chance to move the needle,” he says.

Maiorano wants to build on Trust’s position as a TAMP custodian, he is determined to make Trust more of a mainstream RIA custodian.

“People may look at us as a niche player but we’re not just a niche player,” he says. “I hope to be on the [list of] top five searches” for advisors seeking an asset custodian, he adds.

Stephen Finn, who founded the company and is chairman of the Board of Trust Company of America, believes that Maiorano can move more than a needle.

“His career has been marked by consistent success as a leader in the RIA services industry,” he says. “This leadership will help us continue our remarkable growth and success.”

Jump to $20 billion

Trust Company of America is already on the cusp of reaching $10 billion of assets, and the company should be able to jump to $20 billion in relatively short order,” Maiorano says.

This kind of growth is very possible, according to Steve Winks, principal with SrConsultant.com, which advises on the financial services industry.

Trust has a niche with advisors who grow quickly by using a turnkey asset management structure. Indeed, of Trust’s $9 billion of assets, $6 billion of it can be classified as TAMP assets. Trust Company of America has only 100 RIAs as clients.

Winks points out that Maiorano can keep Trust’s growth streak alive merely by bringing aboard a handful of the kind of RIAs that it specializes in serving. “He can confirm in the market place the demand for these services,” he says in a commnet made on Friday. “He can double his asset base with five or ten advisors.”

Those RIAs may be the easy gains for Maiorano, but he doesn’t intend to stop with them.

Traditional custodian

His ambitions to make the company more of a traditional custodian reflect his experience working for Schwab Institutional from 1989 to 2001 in a variety of positions, including divisional vice president. He joined Nuveen to start and head its RIA sales unit. Both companies experienced sensational growth during these tenures.

Gaining a mainstream presence is something Trust hasn’t succeeded in doing much up to this point, says Sara Nelson, vice president of marketing.

“It’ll bring a whole new level to the company,” she says. “We’ve been an island in a sense.”

Though the top three spots in assets custody for mainstream RIAs is largely locked up by Schwab, Fidelity Investments and TD Ameritrade, the possibilities open up after that.

Pershing, State Street, RBC [once it merges with JPMorgan] and Broadcort all have significantly more than Trust’s $9 billion of assets in custody but they are all primarily seeking RIAs with $100 million or more of assets under management.

As of this fall, Broadcort had stopped accepting the accounts of new RIAs and e-mails and phone calls on the matter to Merrill Lynch spokeswoman Selena Morris have gone unreturned.

Big fish

Though Maiorano is leaving big-name companies, he is actually starting with a better head start with RIAs at Trust than he’s had previously.

Maiorano joined Schwab in 1989 when the RIA custody unit, Schwab Institutional, had just $500 million. By the time he left in 2001, its asset numbered in the hundreds of billions.

He started Nuveen’s RIA business from scratch before helping to build it into one of the biggest players on several asset management platforms for RIAs, he says. It had nearly $10 billion of assets before he left.

Trust itself has been growing fast: from $7.1 billion in 2009 and from $2.3 billion since 2005.

Because TCoA is so healthy, Maiorano plans to take his time getting to know the company before setting a strategic course. He is certain, however, that he can leverage the RIA contacts that he has established over the past two decades.

“I would absolutely hope so,” he says. “That’s a big part of 20 years in the business. There’s a lot of trust. Most folks would take my call. It’ll come into play in the next couple of years.”

Maiorano adds, however, that open doors only take you so far.

“Our service has to stand on its own,” he says.

Brooke’s Note: Though Maiorano is a newcomer to the state of Colorado, he is the beneficiary of a favorable circumstance that will make it feel more like home. His son is enrolled at the University of Colorado — a pure but happy coincidence, the father says.