Jack Petersen’s life as a financial advisor changed on July 24, 2015. After pushing back from his desk, standing up and walking down the familiar hallway of Barclays in Manhattan, he bid farewell to his boss forever. At the time, Barclays was in the process of selling its business to Stifel.

“I’ll never forget that day,” Petersen told Financial Advisor. “It's hard to say good-bye, but it was also very exciting.”

Petersen, six advisors and their seven member support staff in three cities walked out of the wirehouse at the same time with $2 billion in client assets. They never looked back and together today they have $3.4 billion under advisement with 36 employees in four cities.

“I had hope for the future, and I felt really good about what we were doing for our clients as I was convinced we could offer a better platform as an independent advisor, but I had a lot of anxiety as well,” Petersen said.

For nine months, the determined partners had planned and plotted on phone calls from New York, Chicago and San Francisco about teaming up, leaving the wirehouse business model and launching their own registered investment advisory (RIA) called Summit Trail Advisors. But the path was strewn with obstacles, including potentially being slapped with a lawsuit if the plan was not executed according to broker protocol, which is an agreement between major wirehouses that outlines what client information registered representatives can take with them when switching.

“It got a little complicated at the end, but everything was in line with broker protocol departure and we were careful not to violate Barclays code of conduct,” said Petersen. “We went to great lengths to work with outside counsel to guide us on what to do and how to do it.”

Petersen is among a rising number of advisors who are leaving wirehouses in groups to find greener pastures at their own RIA.

“There's many innovative solutions that are available to the RIA market that advisors are enticed by,” said Marc Cohen, chief operating officer with MarketCounsel in Englewood, N.J. “Some of this new technology is phenomenal and the wirehouses simply are not taking advantage.”

Independent RIAs have been on the rise for years. What’s new is the size of the teams of advisors that are leaving b-ds.

Hightower has been assisting mega teams of advisors to transition their books of business that range from $100 million to billions of dollars since 2009.

“Our largest team consisted of a few senior financial advisors with a dozen or more supporting staff members,” said Elliot Weissbluth, CEO and founder of Hightower, with headquarters in Chicago and New York. “When we have a mega team of advisors, often the advisors have slightly different roles on the team so we tend to have a lot of dialogue,”

The wirehouse asset base has shrunk 1.9 percent since 2015 but the independent RIA channel has grown assets by 6.2 percent compared to an average of 0.9 percent for all advisor channels, according to Cerulli Associates.

“To survive this trend going forward, wirehouses need to focus on segmenting their business of manufacturing and selling products and stop pretending that they are fiduciaries providing service,” said Weissbluth. “They need to leave the servicing to real advisors.”

Firms like Dynasty, Hightower and MarketCounsel have sprung up in recent years to assist advisors transition to the freedom and flexibility that an independent advisory practice promises. “It's super important that the decision making on the team rests with a small number of advisors who are empowered to make those decisions,” Weissbluth told Financial Advisor.

Since Dynasty Partners launched in 2011, the average size of the book of business being transferred by freedom hungry advisors has increased from $250 million to $700 million.

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