Steward Partners, an employee-owned hybrid partnership of independent advisory firms, has added former Truist advisor Mike Wood to its network to be based in its Norfolk, Va., branch.
Wood’s move to Steward comes after over 30 years of working in bank-affiliated private wealth divisions. He started at Wells Fargo in 1994, then worked at SunTrust and BB&T Wealth before joining Truist in 2021.
Wood said he had been considering a move to a registered investment advisor in recent years.
“As you have consolidations in the industry, it’s good to be proactive and to educate yourself about options that allow you to best serve clients,” he said. “What I take incredibly seriously for my practice is being an advocate for the clients I serve, and that really piqued my interest in what is out there. Coupling that with the appeal of being able to control the client experience led to the search.”
Wood said he was drawn to Steward’s partnership structure, talent, values and principles, and the open architecture for technology and services. He was particularly drawn to the multi-custodial setup at Steward, with Raymond James as the primary partner, but with other options available.
“The multi-custodial aspect of being able to hand-select the right resource for clients is not something I’ve had in the past, and I think it’s powerful,” Wood said.
Wood had previously advised on client assets of about $502 million and said communication and planned moves for those clients were going well so far.
The advisor has seen the bank-affiliate model shrink over time as the “brick and mortar” aspect has become expensive and inefficient. That has led to bank-affiliate practices raising client minimums and shrinking the pool of options. Now, he looks forward to expanding his client base to retail investors in the $3 million to $5 million range, whom he may not have been able to work with otherwise.
“The HENRYs (High Earner, Not Rich Yet) are really being pushed to a sole practitioner financial advisor that is there to invest the money and not be a true wealth manager across the family,” he said. “This better positions me in that growth component with those families. … you have to have flexibility in that space to be able to provide best-in-class services, advice, and planning.”
Divisional President Jason Bourgo oversees the Southeast region for Steward, having joined from Lincoln Investment in March in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He said Steward has a “healthy pipeline” of new advisors in the Southeast and will open a new office in Sarasota, Fla., in August.
As of June, Steward Partners had over $40 billion in total assets, 590 partners, 296 advisors and 73 offices. Wood’s addition is the fourth the firm has announced this year, including an acquisition earlier this month of $1.1 billion Consilium Wealth Management in Danville, Calif.
The firm is majority-owned by employees and backed by capital from Cynosure Group and the Pritzker Organization.
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