Advisor Group grows research and due diligence team

(City Wire) Advisor Group has added a seventh member to its investment research and product due diligence team with plans to hire one more. 

Advisor Group houses four broker-dealers, which are: Royal Alliance, Woodbury Financial, FSC Securities and Sage Point Financial. 

Earlier this year Royal Alliance bought Signator Investors, a deal which closed in November. 

As a result of this deal, Erik Niland has joined the Advisor Group research team as assistant vice president, investment research and product due diligence. 

He was previously director of product management, wealth, at Signator Investors.

In his new role, Niland is now responsible for fixed income due diligence and reports to Daniel Weiss, head of product due diligence and research at Advisor Group. 

The investment research and product due diligence team is responsible for constructing and monitoring a mutual fund reference list, which is comprised of 31 categories and about 100 mutual funds, in addition to overseeing Advisor Group’s model portfolios and monitoring a range of third-party strategist models.  

The mutual fund reference list, the firm’s model portfolios and the third party strategist models are available to advisors in the firm’s four broker-dealers. 

Weiss, who leads the team, said he is in the market for an eighth member, who will be focused on analysis of annuity and insurance products and will work on the firm’s mutual fund reference list.

He added that the team was focused on growing its numbers because of an uptick in both advisors and assets that the firm has experienced over the past year.

Advisor Group, which had just over 5,000 advisors and $190 billion assets under administration in April, has grown to about 6,800 advisors and $250 billion in assets under administration since then.

This is mainly due to a set of acquisitions including Royal Alliance’s deal for Signator Investors, Woodbury Financial’s acquisition of Capital One Investing and a pending deal for Questar Advisors, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019.

'Advisor Group has experienced significant growth, both organically and through acquisitions,’ Weiss said. ‘In order to continue to enhance and expand our services, we are planning to add an eighth individual to the investment research and due diligence team.’

Adding strategies

Weiss said the team is currently looking for global and domestic real estate, international equity, long-short equity and convertible bonds strategies to add to the mutual fund reference list, and has been active in building up its roster third-party model portfolio managers.

Most recently the firm added three ranges from Capital Group. 

It already offered models from 13 other firms, including BlackRock, Russell Investment and Vanguard.

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