Washington Wealth Management, which was launched in December last year, has named Scott Wilson – latterly of UBS - as its new western regional director as part of its ongoing growth strategy.

Wilson will be based in San Diego, California, and be responsible for developing branch offices in the area, as well as in Palm Springs, California, and Denver, Colorado.

Wilson spent just under a year at UBS, where he was director of a wealth advisory office in San Diego and advised a handful of affluent families. Before that, he served as a complex director at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney for more than three years. He also had a 12-year stint as a complex director for Merrill Lynch.

“Like with many advisors and a significant number of managers, the prior advantage of being with a wirehouse has evaporated over the past few years and it’s taken a toll on the industry as a whole,” Wilson said. “The resources out in the field have been chipped away at, and as a local manager at a wirehouse you don’t know what you don’t know until you reach out to the home office.”

The young company has been busy adding people of late. Last month, the firm hired four wirehouse branch management executives to open offices in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and Arizona. August also saw it sign a deal to share services with Cornerstone Wealth Management, a multi-family office firm in San Diego.

Despite its recent additions in the West, Washington Wealth’s growth plans extend across the US, according to John Simmons, the firm’s president.

“This is national in scope, but we have the good fortune of knowing some really good leaders in critical pockets out West,” Simmons said. “We also have big plans on the East Coast, Northeast, Southeast and in the middle of America. This is a national story; it’s not limited to one region.”