“One of the ones that’s been on our mind for quite a long time since we’ve started I’ll refer to as the turnkey branch model,” Ketterer said. “If you think about the independent advisor, they largely have to do everything for themselves up to this point in their career. They have to find an office. They have to find and staff it up themselves. They have to pick a B-D, they have to pick a clearing firm. They have to find telecommunications, pick a brand, furniture, the whole deal. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the full-service model. So you have banks, you have insurance companies, you have wirehouses, where almost everything is done for them.
“Our belief is that there is something in between … those two extremes where they can have space to fully develop, that has staff around them. That has the package of telecommunications and technology already there. … That’s something that Atria’s been interested in for a while, and we just hadn’t got to it. … That’s what WIS already has.”