Ex-Advisor Group recruiter joins Arkadios after record year

A midsize independent firm aiming to poach more financial advisors from giants of the wealth management industry hired a veteran recruiter as its director of corporate strategy after a record influx of teams and assets last year.

Atlanta-based Arkadios Capital appointed Nathan Stibbs, a 20-year industry veteran with stints as chief strategy officer of Advisor Group's Triad Advisors and president of a Triad hybrid RIA called Continuum Advisory, to the newly created role, the firm said on Feb. 7. Revenue growth of 54% in 2021 made Arkadios the third-fastest growing firm in Financial Planning's IBD Elite rankings that year; the company followed that up in 2022 by adding 42 advisors in 15 offices with $3.2 billion in client assets and $16 million in combined annual revenue.

With more than 3,000 advisors in the channel switching brokerages or seeing their firms change hands last year, independent wealth management firms are waging a fight for top advisor talent, ramping up resources as they jostle for advisors seeking the best flexibility and fit.

"Many organizations don't put as much of a premium on culture and the advisor experience as they should," Stibbs said in an interview. "We are in such a highly commoditized industry today, and I think, for a firm like Arkadios, what separates them from some of the larger, more bureaucratic organizations is their focus on service, culture and always enhancing the advisor experience."

Representatives for Advisor Group and Continuum didn't respond to emails seeking comment on his departure.

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Rising headcounts of advisors at firms like Advisor Group, LPL Financial, Ameriprise and Raymond James amid the industry's record consolidation over the past decade don't faze Stibbs or Arkadios CEO David Millican. The company launched in 2016 after Millican and other co-founders of an advisory practice that was once the largest hybrid RIA at Triad defected for their own brokerage.

"The more people they add, it ultimately is building in an endless amount of folks that have interest in coming to a platform like ours," Millican said of the giants. "They're coming to us because they don't want to be just a number. They want people to know their practice, understand them and give them the flexibility they need to be able to be competitive and be able to get things out in a timely manner."

Other firms are amassing capital and hiring up as part of the recruiting struggle in the independent channel, too. St. Petersburg, Florida-based registered investment advisory firm platform Dynasty Financial Partners dropped its plans in December for an initial public offering and instead sold minority stakes to Charles Schwab and private equity firm Abry Partners. The 48 RIAs with more than 300 advisors in its network manage roughly $75 billion in client assets, with $35 billion of it in Dynasty's own turnkey asset management platform, according to Chief Investment Strategist Bob Shea.

Shea, a onetime partner in the cash equity trading unit at Goldman Sachs who joined Dynasty in November from asset management and index provider FCF Advisors, leads an investment staff of four employees that the company plans to double in size in coming months, he said in an interview. He has taken charge of the firm's Outsourced Chief Investment Officer platform, which has more than $1 billion in client assets. In addition, he leads Dynasty's investment committee and those of several of the RIAs that are part of its network.

Dynasty is seeking to create the kind of investment research and analysis wirehouse advisors get at firms such as Morgan Stanley, Shea said in an interview, noting he's already talking with RIA partners firms about asset allocation and investment strategies for end clients. "We just did a capital raise, we don't have any debt, we are growing and we're hiring," he added.

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By contrast, Arkadios has no plans to follow Dynasty and the many other wealth management companies that have taken outside capital from private equity firms or other investors, Millican said. The company finished 2022 with 162 advisors, five times as many as it had only four years earlier. Its teams span 42 offices with more than $8 billion in client assets, and the firm now has 42 corporate employees in areas such as recruiting and advisor support.

Despite its growth, Arkadios remains "limited a little bit on awareness" among some circles of advisors, Millican said. That's why the firm hired Stibbs.

"Nate brings so much industry knowledge that is so unparalleled to anyone else that I would have had access to that would have been a good cultural fit," Millican said. "Nate is someone I've been courting literally since I opened our doors."

Seven years after its launch, Arkadios is "just getting started," Stibbs said.

"Our best days and years are ahead of us," he said. "We're excited about the changes that we're seeing in front of us throughout the industry. We think that bodes well for Arkadios and we intend to capitalize on that."