The battle to recruit independent advisors just got more intense.

Barnaby Grist, a top recruiting executive from Charles Schwab Corporation, is bringing his RIA expertise over to Cetera Financial Group, the new name for the ING Advisors Network, which was purchased earlier this week by private equity company Lightyear Capital.

Mr Grist, senior managing director of strategic business development at Schwab’s investment advisor group, is set to join Cetera on Monday as executive vice president of wealth management, and will move to Los Angeles, reporting to Cetera chief executive Valerie Brown.

Discussing the breakaway broker phenomenon in an interview with Family Wealth Report last month, Mr Grist called the large number of newly independent advisors going to an existing firm instead of hanging out their own shingle a “big new development.”

“A lot of advisors like the idea of being independent, but when it came down to the nuts and bolts of setting up a new office, installing new technology and doing compliance, they didn’t have the time,” he said.

Mr Grist also predicted that more advisors than ever would leave their existing firms and become independent.

Schwab is investing heavily to help existing RIAs recruit wirehouse advisors, Mr Grist said.

Cetera, which will target “middle affluent” clients with over $150,000 in liquid assets, will also recruit heavily this year, according to Ms Brown, who ran ING Advisors.

"We have very aggressive growth plans," she said in interview with Reuters after the ING sale was announced earlier this week.

ING Advisors consisted of three broker-dealer units which employed brokers and supported outside advisors: Financial Network Investment in El Segundo, California; Multi-Financial Securities in Denver, Colorado; and PrimeVest Financial Services in St Cloud, Minnesota.

Cetera has about 4,800 advisors who oversee $75 billion of assets and generated $22 billion of sales last year.

Mr Grist, a former consultant at Boston Consulting who has been with Schwab for seven years, is well respected in the business but may well have his work cut out for him, according to industry analyst Robert Ellis, principal of the wealth management group at research and consulting firm Novarica.

“The world doesn’t need another ‘me-too’ broker-dealer. The question is how are they going to differentiate the brand? Grist has to come up with a strategic plan for recruiting both advisors and their clients,” Mr Ellis said.