Family Office
Another SEI Advisor Network exec to depart
SEI separates “core” advisor-service business from high-end efforts. Jack May, head of marketing and sales for SEI’s Advisor Network, gave notice early last week. News of his impending departure comes about a month after his boss Carl Guarino resigned. Like Guarino, May says he’s looking into a number of business-ownership opportunities.
“This is something I’m really excited about,” says May. He adds that his decision to leave has “nothing to do with SEI.” Meanwhile – again like Guarino – May says he will stick around to “help with transition issues” through the end of the quarter at least.
SEI serves about 4,500 advisors through the Advisor Network, an investment and business-support platform for independent-brokerage reps and registered investment advisors (RIAs). Those advisors typically serve clients with between $500,000 and $1.5 million in investable assets.
Focus
Wayne Withrow, who replaced Guarino as head of SEI’s Advisor Network before Christmas, agrees that May’s decision to go was all his own. But he adds that Guarino’s and May’s departures coincide with a policy shift with regard to the Advisor Network’s relationship with SEI’s Wealth Network.
SEI’s Wealth Network is a goals-based wealth-management platform that is available as a direct-to-client offering through SEI’s multi-family office, as an outsourced offering to banks, and as a franchise offering to high-end advisories.
Until a few months ago, the Wealth Network franchises had been part of Guarino’s Advisor Network. Now though they’re part – or are soon to be part – of SEI’s high-net-worth business along with its multi-family office and bank-channel wealth-management platforms.
Withrow says that will give the Advisor Network some needed focus. “We were straddling two groups,” he says. “Now we can concentrate on serving our core market of advisors.”
SEI isn’t generally noted for turnover at the executive level, says ThinkEquity analyst Glenn Greene. Yet in the past five or six years the Advisor Network – which Greene calls “a big part of [SEI’s] growth strategy” – has seen a fair amount of churn at or near the top. –FWR
.
