First Republic keeps hiring

First Republic Bank's wealth management group, a destination for wirehouse brokers and advisers for the past decade, has hired three teams so far in 2022, the firm reported Wednesday. That compares to a total of 11 teams recruited in all of 2021, or a little less than three per quarter.

Most recently, at the start of the month First Republic said it had hired Kathleen Kalp to work in Santa Barbara, California, for First Republic Investment Management. Before joining First Republic, she was senior vice president at Montecito Bank & Trust with 28 years of industry experience, according to the company.

First Republic’s wealth management assets at the end of March totaled $274.2 billion, according to the company, compared to $218.9 billion at the same time last year, a 12-month increase of 25.3%.

Total wealth management assets were down slightly — by a little more than $5 billion — compared to the prior quarter, the company said, but the modest decline in wealth management assets for the quarter was a result of market depreciation, offset by net client inflows. The increase in wealth management assets over the past 12 months reflected net client inflows and market appreciation.

Wealth management assets at the end of March included investment management assets of $108.8 billion, brokerage assets and money market mutual funds of $146.7 billion, and trust and custody
assets of $18.8 billion, the company said.

First Republic Bank was part of Merrill Lynch when Bank of America Corp. took over Merrill during the credit crisis in 2010; Bank of America later sold First Republic to a group of private investors, who then took it public.