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In the News

The New Face of the Super OSJ

16:28 01 March in In the News

March 1, 2016

By Diana Britton, Wealth Management Magazine

 

In the late 1990s, Pete Bush was working for Cetera Advisors under an office of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJ), as was most every other independent rep paying for the privilege of having a supervisor. These offices were mandated by FINRA to more effectively distribute the oversight of an independent broker/dealer’s scattered network of affiliated reps.

Bush and a few others from the firm eventually decided it made sense to start their own OSJ; it remained small, just three partners and six advisors, and stayed that way until 2011. But to Bush it still felt like more like a burden than an efficient way to share back-office functions and compliance mandates.

“I was questioning the sanity and the financial viability of being a Super OSJ,” Bush says.

Does the MetLife Deal Signal the End of the Insurance Agent?

16:13 01 March in In the News

February 29, 2016

By Diana Britton, Wealth Management

 

MetLife said goodbye to its insurance agents this week, with the announcement to sell its Premier Client Group to MassMutual for about $300 million. The move could lead other insurers to divest their captive broker/dealers, as they focus their product distribution elsewhere.

“We could see more insurance broker/dealers go by the wayside, while those companies really concentrate on their core competency in manufacturing those policies and annuities,” said Bill Butterfield, senior analyst of the wealth management team at Aite Group.

Many insurers have shed their independent b/ds over the years—AIG being the most recent. In April 2013, MetLife sold its independent b/ds, Tower Square and Walnut Street Securities, to Cetera for an undisclosed sum.

ThinkAdvisor

RCS Capital Files for Bankruptcy; Cetera to Use $50M for Retention

18:21 02 February in In the News

February 1, 2016

by Janet Levaux, ThinkAdvisor

 

The parent company of the Cetera Financial Group of independent broker-dealers, RCS Capital (RCAP), filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware on Sunday as expected, and Cetera plans to spend some $50 million on programs to retain the roughly 9,000 independent advisors affiliated with its network of  broker-dealers who are eligible for such funding, court filings show.

New York-based RCS Capital has close to $2 billion in assets and roughly $1.4 billion in debts, according to a Bloomberg report. The company’s unsecured creditors include Wilmington Savings Fund Society and Proskauer Rose LLP of New York.

In early January, RCS Capital said it had obtained $150 million to restructure its finances from a group of key investors.