Adam Spiegelman, a financial advisor based in Alamo, Calif., with about $400 million in assets under management, has launched his own registered investment advisor, Spiegelman Wealth Management. Spiegelman and his team of three had been at Commonwealth Financial Network for the last eight years.
Spiegelman dropped his FINRA license about three or four years ago and had been moving toward a fee-only model for several years. But Commonwealth’s March announcement to sell to LPL Financial sped up the timeline for his team to go out on their own.
“I had a really good run at Commonwealth. It was a small, 1,900-advisor firm, boutique. I could call up the CEO on his cell phone. They’ve been nothing but incredible on the way out. I love that culture and the people and the service,” he said. “And to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure what that was going to look like as they fold in or are purchased by LPL. Going from a privately held, smaller boutique investment firm to a large publicly traded company, when we think about what our clients’ experience was going to be, what our team’s experience was going to be, there were a lot of unknowns.”
Spiegelman acknowledged that starting an RIA also brings change, but now they’re in control of their own destiny.
“No one’s going to tap on my shoulder, send me an email, make a public announcement saying ‘Hey, you’re being absorbed. Got to scramble,’” he said. “I didn’t want to be under someone else’s destiny.”
Spiegelman’s father, Alan Spiegelman, started the practice in 1989 as a unit of Northwestern Mutual. Adam joined in 2003 and took over the practice about a decade later when his father retired. Today, they serve about 150 clients, including high-net-worth individuals, families and business owners.
The new RIA uses Fidelity and Schwab as custodians, Black Diamond’s wealth platform and Wealthbox for CRM.
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