A Georgia-based team with about $1.1 billion in client assets is going the fee-based, independent RIA route.
The Stribling-Whalen Financial Group’s advisors were previously affiliated with Raymond James Financial Services and work with more than 350 households in about 20 states from its headquarters in Gainesville, Ga.
The team includes founder Warren Stribling, owner Brian Whalen and Jacob Beauchamp, Cindy Casey, Lauren Tuttle, Christa Griffin and Kayleigh Dell. As an independent firm, the team will custody with Fidelity.
According to Whalen, the move is providing the team with “additional resources and capabilities” to better focus on helping clients.
“For us, becoming an independent RIA is really about having greater flexibility to serve our clients the way we believe they should be served,” Whalen said.
Stribling founded the team in 1975, which was affiliated with Wells Fargo from 2008 to 2015 before registering with Raymond James. Whalen, who has about 32 years in the industry, currently owns and leads the team, which works with high-net-worth individuals, families and business owners, offering financial planning and wealth management services.
According to Whalen, the team often works with three or four generations of the same family since Stribling began working in the North Georgia area over 50 years ago.
Stribling-Whalen’s move into the fee-based arena is a part of broader shifts in the broker/dealer vs. fee-based, some of which were cataloged in a recent report by Cerulli Associates, finding that the industry’s largest fee-based firms had lost asset market share in the last five years, compared to their hybrid competitors.
According to Cerulli data, the number of fee-only RIAs at the $5 billion level jumped 7.8% over five years, compared with RIAs with brokerage business, which jumped 12.4%, and those with insurance capabilities, which jumped 37.3%.
Cerulli Senior Director Brendan Powers noted that fee-only RIAs are a larger share of smaller RIAs below the $5 billion threshold. Still, they argued the trend line wouldn’t change if their research extended into that segment.
However, Spencer Bone, acting CEO for the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, pointed out that larger hybrid firms often pursue growth through M&A, which can increase a firm’s size without reflecting a client’s buy-in of that particular model.
“Growing assets and serving clients well are different measures of success,” Bone said.