Bard Financial Services, a Connecticut-based advisory firm managing $1.2 billion in assets, has joined Osaic’s W-2 employee independent channel after nearly four decades as an Osaic partner.
Financial advisor Kenneth Spitzbard is leading the Branford, Conn.-based team with partner Jeffrey Welsh and Managing Director Julie Cross Hoko. Bard Financial was founded in 1986 by Spitzbard’s father, Milton. Kenneth Spitbard then merged his own practice with his father’s in 1989, according to the firm’s website.
The move to Osaic’s Empowered Independence channel seeds some ownership of the firm with Osaic in exchange for Osaic providing “centralized infrastructure, compliance oversight and technology resources.”
“As we looked ahead, we wanted a business model that allows us to devote more time to clients and provide mentoring to the next generation of advisors, while continuing with a trusted partner for operational support,” Spitzbard said in a statement.
Osaic sees a strong future for advisors seeking a setup similar to Spitzbard and team, according to Cindy Hamel, head of Osaic Advisors.
“We have found it appeals tremendously to advisors that have next gen in place, but don’t necessarily have the time to develop them in the way that they would like, and so can leverage a lot of our Osaic resources in terms of how we help develop advisors, and also source advisors and office staff through the Empowered Independence channel,” Hamel said.
Hamel said the move by Bard came from conversations he had with Osaic about how to carve out more time for his clients and team, rather than on back-office administration and being an “accidental CEO.”
It helped that Spitzbard had already been running his own independent RIA on the Osaic wealth platform, so the move meant a smooth transition for both his team and his clients.
“He was looking to retain his autonomy and grow his business and really be able to stay focused on the clients and developing additional staff, but needing some capacity in order to do that, and some help to find those resources,” she said.
Osaic’s independent channel currently has about $5.7 billion in client assets, but Hamel and Osaic see that growing this year, with some advisors already in the pipeline internally, and expectations of adding some external advisor teams. Those potential joiners, she said, may be independent hybrid RIAs looking for more backing, as well as those from the wirehouse and bank channels.
Firms that join the channel can adopt the Osaic brand name, use it as a sub-brand, or keep their own name, provided there is a market case for it among their clientele. The firm also offers a fee-only RIA option via its acquisition last year of CW Advisors.
Osaic, owned by Reverence Capital Partners, recently completed a merger of its eight brokerages under one name and onto a single platform. After completing what the company called Journey to One, it began hearing from advisors about the need for a W-2 channel to support transitions and succession plans, Hamel said.
“We started to hear a need from the field around … what kind of flexibility and choice they were looking for around continued support, growth, development, gaining capacity back, and in some cases, monetization as well,” she said. “We really then doubled down on our Empowered Independence offering, and have really been responding to a lot of questions around, ‘How can you help me really gain capacity, but also retain my autonomy?’”
Osaic is joined by several large RIAs that also offer or are starting to offer a W-2 option for advisors who may be part of a 1099 platform model. That differs from some large RIAs that bring acquired teams onto their platform and under their brand name as part of the transaction.
Hamel said the San Diego-based IBD is aware that many advisors want to retain their culture and entrepreneurial spirit.
“We are not intending to run these businesses or standardize them in the same way that some of the other W-2 models do,” she said. “The conversation is one around education to a certain extent, but also trying to understand what it is they’re trying to achieve.”