Advisor Network’s Guarino to leave SEI in 2006 after 18 years. Carl Guarino has resigned from his position as head of SEI's Advisor Network and plans to leave the Oaks, Pa.-based investment-platform and technology provider altogether before the winter is out.

“I’ve wanted to do something more entrepreneurial for a long time,” says Guarino, who adds that he hasn’t made any firm decisions about his next move, other than its possibly having to do with venture financing, most likely in the Philadelphia area, where he has lived and worked for the past two decades.

No dash for the door

Between now and his departure early in the second quarter of 2006, however, Guarino, an executive v.p., will continue working with senior v.p. Kevin Robins to develop “solutions” for SEI’s Wealth Network wealth-management platform. Their work is centered on the Wealth Network’s efforts to extend SEI wealth franchises to high-end advisors and to bolster existing franchises.

About 4,500 advisors use SEI’s Advisor Network, an investment and business-support platform for independent brokers and registered investment advisors (RIAs). Approximately 70% of them are fee-based independent brokers; the rest are fee-only RIAs, says Jack May, head of “solutions” for the Advisor Network. “They’re typically higher-end advisors whose average clients have between $1 million and $3 million in net worth, with about half of that as investable assets,” says May. “They typically have four or five people in the firm, with an owner, one or two producers and some support staff.”

SEI’s Wealth Network has eight advisory franchisees, which puts it ahead of the target it set for itself when it launched into the advisor space a year ago. The Wealth Network’s ambitious “Life-Wealth,” goals-based wealth-management platform has a slightly longer tenure as a direct-to-client offering for ultra-high-net-worth families. In addition, the Wealth Network recently made a foray into the bank space in partnership with Mount Joy, Pa.-based Union National Bank.

Guarino, who has been with SEI since April 1988, says he’s sticking around for three or four more months for the sake of continuity, especially with regard to the Wealth Network’s franchise business. “I don’t want my departure to interrupt that in any way.” He sees SEI’s efforts there focused more on bolstering existing Wealth Network franchises than on adding new franchisees.

“We’re not looking to expand explosively next year,” says Guarino. “We want to make sure you have everything running smoothly.” Down the road, however, he sees the focus on building out new Wealth Network franchises coming to the fore again. And that will include helping people with non-financial backgrounds become franchisees.

Doing his own thing

Examples of franchise candidates with non-financial backgrounds are professional athletes and well-placed politicians “who are coming to the ends of their careers but still want to help people and are interested in becoming advisors,” says May. “We would help them through the process of licensing and meeting all the regulatory requirements.”

Guarino says his departure has been in the cards for a while, and it’s something he and SEI chairman and CEO Al West have hashed out pretty thoroughly. “I think he wanted me to stay, but Al is an entrepreneur and so he understands my decision.”

An SEI press release has West wishing Guarino “all the best when he leaves us to do his own thing.”

Guarino hasn’t pinpointed what he’ll do next, but he says it might be something in the realm of venture funding, particularly in support of early-stage start-ups. “Venture is what I’m most passionate about,” he says. “The [Wealth Network] franchise business had some of that – and SEI is one of the best places, from a corporate perspective, for a entrepreneur – but I feel a personal drive to lead efforts in a more entrepreneurial environment than you can have in a publicly-owned company.”

Had Guarino stayed on as head of SEI’s Advisor Network, he might have found himself distanced from the Wealth Network franchises. SEI recently switched things around so that, administratively at least, those franchises fall into the company’s high-net-worth business along with its multi-family office, according to Guarino. Up until that change, the Wealth Network franchises had been part of Guarino’s Advisor Network.

But Guarino emphasizes that his descision to leave SEI was purely personal. “I’m 48, and I can hear the clock ticking,” he says. “If I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, now is the time to do it.”

Wayne Withrow, head of the SEI’s Money Managers unit – an outsourced operations provider to mutual-fund, managed-account and alternative-investment managers – has taken Guarino’s place as head of the Advisor Network. Stephen Meyer, a managing director with Money Managers, has stepped into Withrow’s shoes. –FWR

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