28 advisors kept an $825 million book by staying put

When Sierra Ridge Advisor Group, the Roseville, Calif., OSJ, took roughly $2.1 billion in assets under administration from LPL Financial to Cetera last month, twenty-eight advisors and team members jointly responsible for about $825 million in client assets stayed behind on LPL's platform and affiliated with Gateway Financial Partners, a hybrid RIA and large OSJ that also runs on LPL. Sierra Ridge plans to launch its own RIA on Cetera's Blueprint platform.

From the advisor's chair, the split separates two things teams tend to bundle when the enterprise above them changes broker-dealers: the economics of the enterprise and the continuity of the practice. Sierra Ridge executives said they had aggressive growth plans — expansion in the Midwest and on the East Coast, more advisor recruiting, and a hybrid model that keeps a brokerage affiliation — that they felt LPL could not support. Cetera describes Blueprint as a multi-custodial, modular middle-office stack on which recruits can execute a growth plan. What the 28 evaluated, in Ryan Bell's account, was narrower: Gateway's value proposition, its partnership culture, practice growth resources, succession planning support and the strength of its team. "We're excited to join Gateway and to do it without asking a single client to change platforms," he said.

Gateway's terms are the part worth pricing. Founded in 1994 by David Wood and based in Glastonbury, Conn., the OSJ counts more than 200 advisors across 27 states and about $10.5 billion in assets under advisement. Under its Gateway Growth Partnership, it takes a 15% to 20% revenue stake in an advisor's practice in exchange for a mix of cash and equity in the firm's holding company. A fifth of revenue is closer to a payout structure than a recruitment check, and the advisor signing it is buying a share of a 200-advisor enterprise — a different instrument from owning a practice outright with the infrastructure bill attached. For a team that just watched one OSJ change hands, taking equity in the next one is a hedge against the same event repeating, which is likely why succession support surfaced in Bell's short list of deciding factors.

This publication has argued that infrastructure, not payout grids, now decides where multi-advisor teams land, and this split reads as evidence for it. The 28 who stayed bought continuity — Bell's phrase is that no client had to change platforms — and their $825 million is the bill Sierra Ridge paid for treating the move as an enterprise decision. Weight the two figures loosely, since the source calls the smaller number assets under advisement and the larger one assets under administration, which are not the same measure. The retention line is the one to track: it is what sets the price of the next OSJ announcement.

Sierra Ridge's recruiting in the Midwest and on the East Coast is the number to watch now. Replace the book the 28 kept, and the enterprise-channel story holds; fall short, and the next OSJ that announces a move should expect its advisors to run the continuity math before they commit.