Osaic hybrid adds Fidelity's National Financial as custodian

Osaic Institutions Inc., which works with financial advisors at banks and credit unions, disclosed last month that it had added Fidelity's National Financial Services Inc. as a custodian of the advisory side of its business. The firm already works with Pershing as a custodian.

Osaic Institutions has $3.6 billion in client assets, according to its most recent Form ADV with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm disclosed it added National Financial in its updated filings with the SEC last month.

Advisor Group, a giant network of more than 10,000 financial advisors, last year said it was rebranding as Osaic and consolidating many of its broker-dealers as well. Such moves are ways for financial services firms to control and reduce costs.

The intense amount of activity at Osaic comes as the broader wealth management market waits to see if the company moves to go public and files for an IPO or whether it would sell a minority stake in the firm, as Bloomberg reported last year.

A spokesperson for Osaic did not return a call on Wednesday to comment.

Osaic Institutions appears to be a bit of an outlier. While many of the former Advisor Group firms, including Securities America Inc., have been merged into Osaic Wealth Inc., Osaic Institutions is the renamed version of Infinex Investments Inc., a bank focused broker-dealer Advisor Group acquired in 2022 with 750 financial advisors and $30 billion in client assets.

Adding National Financial as a custodian along with Pershing put Osaic Institutions in line with other Osaic hybrid platforms, which have both trading services for brokers and custody services for registered investment advisors, industry sources said.

"I was under the impression that the Securities America merger was a bit bumpy for some advisors," noted one industry executive who spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews about Osaic's operations.

Owned by Reverence Capital, Osaic has been on a buying spree; it acquired American Portfolios Financial Services Inc. , along with Infinex Investments in 2022, and at the end of last year said it was acquiring Lincoln Wealth from the insurer Lincoln National Corp.

The approximately 1,450 financial advisors involved in the Lincoln Wealth transaction worked with roughly $108 billion in assets. Osaic did not comment on the acquisition cost, but Lincoln Financial said it was $700 million in a separate announcement.