HighTower Snags Three Advisors

By Cyril Tuohy

InsuranceNewsNet

Three mid-Atlantic-based financial advisors have joined Kelly Wealth Management in Hunt Valley, Maryland -- part of the HighTower family of advisors -- from Wells Fargo Advisors in Baltimore, an announcement from HighTower said.

John Morgan, Brian Sabo and Jason Edelson will join Kelly Wealth Management as directors and partners.

Leo J. Kelly III, managing director and partner of Kelly Wealth Management, said he was “honored” that the three had joined the team.

“This is an exciting time for our firm as we continue to evolve and expand,” Kelly said in a news release. “These new additions further our commitment to growing our practice to better serve our clients.”

Kelly’s three new advisors will bring $384 million in assets to the firm and increase the practice’s total assets under advisement to about $1.2 billion, HighTower said.

Earlier this year, RJ Wealth Management, a management team specializing in investment and retirement planning and stock options and strategies planning, left the Global Wealth Management Group at Merrill Lynch for HighTower in New York.

HighTower, headquartered in Chicago, said RJ Wealth Management was the 42nd advisory team to join the partnership.

The group included Jeffrey S. Vogel and Ruth E. Berger, who joined as partners and managing directors, Sadie Lanzet, who joined as a registered senior client associate and Chris DiCostanzi, a client associate.

Michael LaMena, president of HighTower, said that HighTower’s “innovative business model” appeals to independent financial advisors in search of “the best of both worlds,” in terms of independence and innovative technology.

Successful teams of financial advisors with a portfolio of high-net-worth clients are highly sought after by wealth management companies because of the complex needs of wealthy people and families.

Teams of advisors often jump from one advisory group to another, and for every team that leaves a wirehouse for another group, wirehouses attract more than their fair share of teams from smaller advisory groups.

Although wirehouses and private client groups dominate the top tiers of the wealth management market for high net worth assets, registered investment advisors, private trust companies and even state-registered bank trust companies “are gaining substantial traction,” according to a report published last year by the consulting firm Cerulli Associates   

The high-net-worth segment requires special help in areas ranging from trust and estate planning, to complicated tax positions and hedging, to structuring asset protection strategies with the use of insurance policies.

In its report on the state of the high-net-worth market, Cerulli found there were an estimated 62,410 households in the ultra-high-wealth market segment, or households with investable assets of $20 million or more, in 2012.

The high-wealth segment, the next category down, with households of between $10 million and $20 million, had an estimated 186,648 households, the report said. The wealth segment, with households of between $5 million and $10 million, had an estimated 584,472 households.

The highest wealth categories were followed by the affluent, the mass-affluent, middle and mass market categories.

Cyril Tuohy is a writer based in Pennsylvania. He has covered the financial services industry for more than 15 years. Cyril may be reached at [email protected].

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