Cetera Announces Reorg, Taps New Leaders
February 14, 2018 by Janet Levaux
Cetera Financial Group says it is reorganizing its businesses into two channels and has both promoted and hired new leadership to support this strategy.
Catherine Bonneau, formerly CEO of Cetera Financial Institutions, is now COO of the Cetera Financial Group. Mimi Bock, the former head of national sales and consulting at LPL Financial, is president of Cetera Advisors and First Allied Securities. And Tim Stinson, previously head of wealth management sales at Cetera, is now head of wealth management.
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“We think it is phenomenal that in a relatively short timeframe we have taken meaningful steps in the support of our diversity commitment,” said Cetera Financial Group CEO Robert Moore, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor. “Mimi is a leading advocate for women advisors and for understanding ways to enrich their practices and attract new women to the industry via CFP programs and other means.”
Cetera’s new traditional channel, led by Brett Harrison, includes Cetera Advisors, First Allied Securities and Summit Brokerage Service and supports ensemble practices, independent producer groups and smaller or solo practitioners.
The specialty channel, headed by Tom Taylor, encompasses Cetera Advisor Networks, Cetera Financial Institutions and Cetera Financial Specialists. It works with large teams of independent advisors (which it calls regional director-led firms), wealth-management programs at financial institutions and independent financial advisors with ties to tax-advisory work.
Overall, Cetera has about 8,000 affiliated independent advisors.
“This is a very significant announcement on our part as a milestone along the pathway we have been articulating and aspiring toward for an advisor-centric experience,” Moore explained.
“The harnessing of technology, streamlining of relationships, tapping into scale and insights, and focusing on solutions [that contribute] to the financial well-being for clients — all are constituent parts,” he added.
As there are more complex, sophisticated types of relationships between advisors and clients today, Cetera “needs to have specialized knowledge around what these different models are working to accomplish — in other words tailor our work, which is why Tom Taylor is heading this effort,” he quipped. “In all seriousness, this is our way to say it’s important to have different paths of affiliation in the marketplace. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”
