Commonwealth Financial Network, a national financial firm that provides financial advisors with integrated business solutions, is transforming into a national RIA that also owns a broker-dealer platform, the Waltham, Mass.-based firm, announced today.
The growth of the firm over last year “shows the successful transformation of Commonwealth into an RIA that happens to also own a broker-dealer platform,” Commonwealth said. The transformation that Commonwealth describes parallels the movement in the advisory profession from the brokerage to the RIA model.
“We are not trying to rival the other large financial firms. Instead, we are doing more of what we have always done but on a bigger scale,” Becca Hajjar, managing principal and chief business development officer at Commonwealth, said in an interview.
So far, the firm has commitments to join Commonwealth from advisors and firms with $8 billion in AUM that will be completed this year and hopes to add a total of $17.5 billion in AUM by the end of the year, Hajjar said. That goal will be accomplished by adding firms and advisors to the Commonwealth network and helping firms within the network acquire other firms and grow, she said.
“Commonwealth does not target advisors representing any particular niche or geographic area,” Hajjar said. “Rather, it wants to attract advisors who have a focus on financial planning and a desire to grow,” she added.
Commonwealth provides various business models for advisors to join the firm, with the most popular being firms that want to join under the Commonwealth corporate RIA or organize as their own RIA. Growth has come from RIAs, independent broker-dealers, regional firms and wirehouses.
“The thing that differentiates us is that we will help advisors evolve as they grow and change their methods of affiliation if they want,” Hajjar said. The pandemic slowed the recruiting process a bit because it was a time of uncertainty, but it has now increased considerably, she said.
“We saw increased recruiting success in 2022 with ensembles and larger enterprise firms. In addition to evolving as a leading independent RIA, our wirehouse recruiting efforts also are gaining momentum as entrepreneurial advisors want to be in business for themselves. We provide them with a ‘soft landing’ that includes our Virtual Transition Support and expanded Outsourced Business Solutions offering,” Hajjar said in a statement.
Last year Commonwealth added $11.2 billion in assets under management for a total of $243 billion. The growth was a record level for the firm, doubling the amount added in 2021. The majority of assets added last year were from fee-only or fee-based advisors, Commonwealth said.
Commonwealth has a network of 2,000 financial advisors. By comparison, Cetera Financial Group, with four times the advisor headcount, added $13 billion in assets in 2022, according to Cetera.
“Despite the difficult headwinds our advisors, their clients, and the industry faced last year, our team was extremely successful in bringing top-caliber financial advisors to our firm,” Wayne Bloom, Commonwealth CEO, said in a statement. “Our ambitious goal of [eventually] reaching $1 trillion in assets under management is rooted in a well-managed growth strategy built around our advisor-centric values.”