Family Office
IBD-owned investment platform reaches out to RIAs
Next Financial's WE2 brings in RIA-sales expert to grow unaffiliated uptake. WE2, a newish fee-based investment platform provider owned by independent broker-dealer NEXT Financial, has hired Curt Meyer, formerly national head of RIA sales for asset manager Old Mutual U.S., to help it extend sales to unaffiliated wealth managers.
Right now 18-month-old WE2 accounts for more than $130 million in assets, all of it in the books of Next Financial's 1,000 or so affiliated brokers. The plan is to get the third-party mutual-fund wrap, unified managed account, ETF-portfolio and variable annuity platform out to unaffiliated advisors and make it a $1-billion-in-assets concern by 2013.
Phase one
"We are exceedingly confident in Curt Meyer's abilities," says Gordon D'Angelo, CEO of Houston-based NEXT and chairman of WE2. "His talents matched with WE2's innovative services for clients and advisors will escalate our growth."
WE2's president Susanna Joiner agrees with D'Angelo's assessment. "I've known Curt for about a year," she says. "He can really connect with the advisors, which to critical to our business-development efforts" -- especially in view of the difficulty of reaching small-firm, geographically dispersed RIAs, she adds.
Prior to running Old Mutual's RIA-channel sales, Meyer was a regional consultant for Rydex Investments.
With WE2, Meyer will be responsible for expanding advisory services to RIAs and developing new advisory services suited to that channel as a whole and to individual firms and advisors.
"My decision to join WE2 was predicated on the integrity of the leadership team, top-tier asset management solutions and the opportunity to build this segment of the business," says Meyer.
Though WE2 has RIAs in focus as the first stage of its outreach to advisors who aren't affiliated with Next Financial, Joiner says it has plans to market its bespoke investment platforms and fee-based-business consulting services to other unaffiliated independents as well as to banks and trust companies. -FWR
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