Big Midwestern RIA hires away a Fidelity exec to realize its $50 billion plan
Mariner Wealth Advisors has reached a critical size where professional management is called for
5 min read- Mariner Wealth Advisors hires Fidelity's Brian O'Regan to drive wealth division growth toward $50B AUM.
- O'Regan aims to communicate Mariner's culture and strategy to attract advisors.
- Bicknell seeks to increase wealth management's revenue contribution to 35% with O'Regan's help.
Brooke’s Note: Remember Victor Kiam who liked Remington razors so much that he bought the company. Perhaps Marty Bicknell can relate to that sentiment after liking one Fidelity service so much that he is now buying the services of the Fidelity employee providing it. The hire might not be so notable were it not for the size of the mission that Brian O’Regan is charged with. Think national offices with tens of billions of assets generating fees for the Leawood, Kan. home office. If the plan pans out, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services as primary custodian makes out pretty well on the personnel shift, too.
When Marty Bicknell left A.G. Edwards to start his own firm back in 2006, he needed lots of help: Bicknell admits he didn’t even really know what an RIA model was.
With the help of Fidelity Investments business development executive Brian O’Regan, Bicknell started up Mariner Wealth Advisors, in Leawood, Kan. Five and a half years later, Mariner has become a $10 billion consolidator with its sights on $50 billion of assets under management by the end of the decade. Now, coming full circle, the firm has hired O’Regan to help it reach that goal.
Mariner’s tale
“The main objective of the next three years is to focus more on the wealth division than we have in past,” says Bicknell. “Brian is the leader in that effort to tell the Mariner story.”
O’Regan says he sees his mission as helping advisors understand “the culture and the organization we’re trying to build” and that he sees leaving Fidelity to join an RIA as a change-is-good step in his personal development.
Big Midwestern RIA buys itself a national presence in deal with CBIZ
Marty Bicknell: Closing that gap is
the whole goal of bringing Brian
in.
“I wouldn’t say one was a better opportunity versus the other. I was with Fidelity for almost 20 years and this was simply a different opportunity for me to pursue at this stage of my career. I love building things and I could do that both with Fidelity and Mariner and consider myself blessed to have gone from one great organization to another.”
CBIZ aftermath
The hiring of O’Regan comes after Mariner extended its presence into cities including Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Cumberland, Md., with its January acquisition of CBIZ Inc.'s wealth management unit. See: Big Midwestern RIA buys itself a national presence in deal with CBIZ.
Mariner Wealth Advisors is part of Mariner Holdings LLC, which also includes Montage Investments LLC. Montage accounts is an asset manager for about 80% of the company’s revenue and assets. One of Bicknell’s goals is to expand the wealth business’ contribution to 35%. That’s where O’Regan is expected to help.
Story Timeline
“Closing that gap is the whole goal of bringing Brian in,” says Bicknell.
By now, it’s not surprising when an executive from a big custodian jumps to an RIA, says Philip Palaveev, owner of Fusion Advisor Network, in Elmsford, N.Y.
On its march to $50 billion, Mariner finds its groove buying RIAs connected to accounting firms
Philip Palaveev: RIAs can pay up
for talent: The top 500 RIA
executives in the country, for example,
are likely better compensated than their
peers at the largest custodians.
Appealing employers
In many cases, RIAs typically offer a more intimate, less bureaucratic and more relaxed culture, he points out. And RIAs can pay up for talent: The top 500 RIA executives in the country, for example, are likely better compensated than their peers at the largest custodians.
“I think the combination of economic potential and a much better quality of life makes RIAs very appealing employers,” he says.
Schwab and Fidelity have groomed “a tremendous number of people” who have provided a talent pool for other broker-dealers, custodians and RIAs, he noted.
O’Regan, a 19-year veteran of Fidelity (which still handles most of Mariner’s assets), was most recently responsible for Fidelity’s business development in the South Central United States. In that role, he brought advisors like Bicknell onto the Fidelity platform, helped them get established and provided practice management and other help.
Army of advisors
Mariner wants to increase its total of 35 wealth advisors to 135 over about three years. In that quest, O’Regan will recruit everyone from independent advisors to Wall Street breakaways, says Bicknell. Mariner positions itself as different from other consolidators in two main ways, Bicknell says. It’s extremely client-focused; Bicknell says he has walked away from more than 100 advisors over the past few years because their priorities didn’t match Mariner’s.
Another differentiator is Mariner’s independence. The company is owned by a perpetual trust, and selling it is not in the plans, says Bicknell. “We’re not forced to make decisions public firms as forced to make, such as it just being all about revenue,” he says. “We’re making decisions as a company for people that don’t exist today.”
Look for a report on another big strategic move by Mariner Wealth Advisors in RIABiz on Monday.
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