A top RBC Wealth Management executive gets drafted to head the company's young RIA unit

RBC Wealth Management has appointed Catie Tobin head of its RIA custody business. The company’s move came as a part of an executive reshuffling triggered by the retirement of Mike Kavanagh, chief administrative officer and head of RBC Correspondent and Advisor Services.

Since the advisory arm of the giant Canadian bank started the advisory business in 2007, it has been racing to position itself as a landing place for big, sophisticated hybrid advisors. The promise has been to take all the capital markets and big banking capabilities of Royal Bank of Canada and put them at the fingertips of these RIAs.

Tobin has plans to bring RBC’s capabilities like credit lending and estate planning to independent advisors, she says. “I think size is an advantage to us; we have all the resources of RBC, but we also have a service culture.”

Smarts and gravitas

Though RBC has enjoyed some success with meeting special needs of big RIAs, Tobin has the smarts — and as a 20-year veteran of RBC — organizational gravitas to fortify the custody platform, according to Craig Gordon, director of RBC Correspondent and Advisor Services. He heads its business development efforts.

“She’s got the knowledge, the pull and the clout and she understands the building side and the user side. She gets it.”

Though Tobin, 51, isn’t the first woman top exec at a custodian, it’s still unusual. She worked her way up through the industry to attain her current title: head of RBC Correspondent and Advisor Services. Kavanagh’s additional duties as CAO were scattered to various executives at the firm. Tobin will report directly to the chief executive of RBC Wealth Management – U.S., John Taft.

In her previous position with RBC Wealth Management, she assisted full service brokers in using the firm’s wealth management tools. In her job before that, she served as wealth management consulting director. Tobin has also served as director of private client services and was a member of the firm’s senior management group.

Service culture

Craig Gordon: She’s got the knowledge,
the pull and the clout.

From her position in the legacy business, she gained an appreciation for the advisors in the RIA and IBD models.

“I’m excited to be on this side,” she says. “I think this is an area that RBC believes is a great growth opportunity.”

Certain clientele

RBC, which has a $100-million minimum for the RIAs it serves and closed on the purchase of the RIA unit of JPMorgan in June, is making moves with a certain clientele in mind.

“Advisors that serve the elite client are attractive to us, and I hope we will be attractive to them,” Tobin says.

RBC currently serves about 84 RIA firms with about $11.5 billion of assets. Tobin also oversees 170 independent broker-dealers that clear through her company. See: Royal Bank of Canada is hustling to become an RIA custody force

To create stronger ties with top advisory firms, RBC said in an earlier announcement that it appointed four of its employees to roles as senior relationship managers.

Kelly Cobb joined RBC Advisor Services in June as a result of the completion of the J.P. Morgan Investment Advisor Services acquisition. She brings more than 12 years of financial services industry experience to the team, including the past four years where she has worked specifically with RIA firms. Prior to joining RBC, Ms. Cobb was vice president of J.P. Morgan’s Investment Advisor Services group and also worked for Bear Stearns as an associate director in the Global Clearing Services division, working with RIA firms.

Paul Meehl was previously head of client services for RBC’s operations for eight years.

JoAnn O’Rourke has been a relationship manager for RBC Correspondent Services for the past two years. She will continue to use her relationship management expertise to build and define the relationship manager group.

Greg Plifka brings more than 30 years of compliance, operations, legal, technology and management experience to the team. He most recently served as regional administrative manager for the east region with RBC Wealth Management. Mr. Plifka has been with RBC since its acquisition of JB Hanauer in 2007.

RBC is positioned to fill a niche as the big full service broker that throws its full weight behind RIAs, according to Gordon’s comments in an earlier interview.

Different from Merrill Lynch

“It’s different for our organization because the size of our client service is very different from Merrill Lynch” and other investment banks. “We have 2,400 in-house advisors. It would be very different if I told you it was 24,000. The commitment in that channel would be too big to disrupt. [The concern over disruption] is very real [for Merrill Lynch]. We view it as an opportunity that they’ve downplayed or participated in sheepishly.”

Gordon adds that RBC’s pipeline is fuller than it has been in three years, though more of it is on the IBD side than the RIA side right now.

Royal Bank of Canada is an 80,000-employee behemoth operating in 55 countries with 18 million clients. It owns RBC Wealth Management, which has 200 locations in 43 states and encompasses the old Dain Rauscher, a Minneapolis-based full-service broker-dealer and investment bank. See: RBC’s appearance on custody scene could be a 'game changer’

The relationship of Kavanaugh and Tobin began several years ago, she says. “He has always been a great friend and mentor to me.”

She first got involved with working with him on the RIA business when he called on her to help transition over the JPMorgan RIA custody assets in 2009. See:RBC is checking every box to ensure it acquires the JPMorgan RIA unit intact