Merrill Lynch team with $450m leaves for Steward Partners

A team of Merrill Lynch brokers are launching an independent wealth management practice with Steward Partners Global Advisory.

Vantage Point Private Wealth manages $450 million in client assets and is led by Mark Morasky, Erik Clay and Chris Figaro. The firm has offices in Walnut Creek, California, and Madison, Wisconsin.

When making the decision to go independent, the advisors had a long wish list of things that would help them better serve clients, said Morasky, who spent the last 17 years at Merrill Lynch and has a total of 26 years of experience in the industry.

"We did extensive due diligence, but Steward Partners was the only firm that checked all the boxes, in terms of being better for our clients and better for us,” Morasky said in a statement.

In particular, Steward’s open architecture approach lets Vantage choose products that best fit each client’s needs, said Figaro, who spent eight years at Merrill Lynch and has been in the industry for 12 years, according to BrokerCheck.

"We chose to join Steward Partners because as a partner, we will have the freedom to make our own business decisions and a much wider range of available solutions," added Clay, another 12-year wealth management veteran who had spent his whole career at Merrill Lynch.

Vantage Point will use BNY Mellon Pershing as its custodian, in another victory for the partnership Steward Partners and Pershing began this year. The addition of Ensign Wealth Partners in March pushed Steward’s total custodial assets on Pershing past $1 billion, and in April a $200 million team from UBS joined Steward to use both Pershing and Raymond James as its custodian.