Andy Seig, the head of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and a member of Bank of America’s executive management team, has left the company, according to Bank of America. Seig is reportedly returning to his old stomping grounds at rival Citigroup, where, according to Reuters, he will lead the global wealth arm.
This is Seig’s second time leaving Merrill Lynch and second time joining Citi, where he will report to CEO Jane Fraser, according to CNBC.
As wealth management chief, he leaves behind more than 25,000 Merrill employees, BofA said, and client balances that totaled $2.8 trillion as of December 31, 2022.
Seig led Merrill Lynch Wealth Management for the last six years; before that he had been Merrill’s managing director and head of global wealth and retirement solutions. He came over from Citi in 2009 after a four-year stint there. He’d begun the first leg of his career at Merrill from 1992 to 2005. Before that, he’d served in the George H.W. Bush White House as an aid to the assistant to the president for economic and domestic policy. He graduated from Penn State in 1989 and later got a master’s in public policy, business and government relationship at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Bloomberg reported last September that Bank of America had created a new wealth management banking and lending group to reach out to wealthier clients. This organization would be made up of 3,500 employees, led by April Schneider, who was reporting to Sieg.
Sieg appeared on Fox Business in early March and said that Merrill was bullish on equities and that the Fed was closer to the end than it was to the beginning of its inflation fighting through rate hikes. Even though BofA’s global wealth and investment management’s AUM balances declined in the fourth quarter of 2022, the firm added 800 wealth advisors in the second half of last year.
Citigroup, like other brokerage firms, saw its revenues buffeted by plunging markets last year.
The bank said in its fourth quarter earnings report, “The higher net interest income was driven by the impact of higher interest rates across businesses and strong loan growth in Personal Banking and Wealth Management (PBWM). The lower non-interest revenues reflected declines in Investment Banking in Institutional Clients Group (ICG) and lower investment product revenues in Global Wealth Management in PBWM.”
Sieg is being replaced by two presidents and co-heads at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management: Lindsay Hans and Eric Schimpf, who will also join BofA’s executive management team. They will report to Bank of America’s chair and CEO Brian Moynihan.
Hans has been serving as chief of Merrill’s Private Wealth Management, International and Institutional business after coming aboard Merrill in 2014. Schimpf started his career as a Merrill financial advisor in 1994. For six years he was a division executive, first for the Southeast, and later for the Pacific Coast. He also has been serving as co-head of the Enterprise Advisor Development program.
Moynihan said, “Lindsay and Eric have excelled as leaders, delivering outstanding results for our advisors and clients. I’m looking forward to them building on the success and long tradition of Merrill in the years ahead.”
For much of the second half of the 20th century, Merrill Lynch boasted the nation's largest personal investment platform. But savings and investments patterns have changed with the rise of the RIA business model, the growth of 401(k) plans and the popularity of discount brokerages.
Today, Schwab's $7.4 trillion in assets and Fidelity's $10 trillion-plus assets under administration dwarf Merrill's $2.8 trillion. In recent years, Bank of America has invested heavily in Merrill Edge, a discount brokerage business unit, in an effort to compete with the lower cost platforms. Morgan Stanley has also targeted the same market with its acquisition of E*Trade in 2021.
Many past CEOs of Merrill Lynch, including former Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, Daniel Tully and David Komansky, began their rise in the wealth management business, then called the brokerage division. In recent years, many heads of wealth management at the firm have left. They include James Gorman, who left Merrill for Morgan Stanley in 2006, has served as CEO there since 2010 and grown its wealth management business aggressively; Sallie Krawchek, now CEO of Ellevate; and Bob McCann, who is serving as chairman of UBS's global wealth management arm.