A former UBS registered investment advisor has left the firm to start her own RIA in partnership with support platform Sanctuary Wealth.
Kristin Larson has launched NewSpring Wealth Partners, which has about $200 million in client assets and two client support staff members based in Minneapolis.
The firm, which will custody with Charles Schwab, is focused on “complete financial planning and investment management solutions.”
Larson is hanging a shingle after working for over nine years at UBS, most recently as senior vice president, wealth management and financial advisor at Carlson Larson Wealth Management. Before that role, she had worked as a client associate with Wells Fargo and paraplanner and office manager with Ameriprise Financial.
Larson’s “accomplishments so early in her career are admirable—already being recognized as one of the top next-gen and top woman advisors in the industry,” Vince Fertitta, president of Sanctuary Wealth, said in a statement. “By choosing independence, she has unlocked a valuable asset with a fantastic growth trajectory and can now serve as a true fiduciary for her clients, offering them expanded support, enhanced technology and objective investment solutions.”
Larson is following a path many wirehouse advisors have taken to shift to an RIA practice. Cerulli Associates, which tracks advisor breakaways, projects that more than 500 wirehouse advisors move to independent or hybrid RIA models yearly.
“Once I got a glimpse of what is possible in the independent space, I couldn’t unsee how much better I would be able to serve and communicate with clients than continuing to work as an employee,” Larson said.
Sanctuary Wealth has been working to be the partner for such moves by advisors. It currently has 120 partner firms in 30 states, representing about $50 billion in assets on its platform.
RIA platform providers such as Sanctuary, Stratos and Steward partners have helped along the trend of wirehouse moves by providing advisors with centralized resources and services for holistic wealth management, said Stephen Caruso, associate director of Wealth Management for Cerulli Associates.
“They have created these soft-landing grounds for advisors,” Caruso said. “We’ve been seeing that trend overall in recent years and expect it to continue as the services [firms like Sanctuary] offer grow over time and become more sufficient.”
Of course, wirehouses are not standing still, Caruso said, with shops trying to offer more RIA-like experiences and improved compensation models. But those adjustments can be challenging for large organizations.
“Firms will continue to adapt, but the RIA world moves a lot faster than the wirehouses in some cases,” he said. “[Wirehouses] are competing with many folks that are smaller and nimble.”
