Commonwealth loses marketing VP and $1.7B in advisor assets to Farther

Technology-focused RIA Farther is cashing in on the fallout from Commonwealth Financial Network’s sale to LPL Financial, recruiting 10 advisors managing $875 million in assets and hiring Commonwealth’s longtime marketing executive Sarah Howes. A Farther spokesperson told InvestmentNews that another six Commonwealth advisors with $800 million in assets are set to join in the coming weeks, bringing Farther’s total haul from departing Commonwealth advisors to $1.7 billion.

Howes has joined Farther as its senior director of advisor marketing. She spent the past 10 years at Massachusetts-based Commonwealth, most recently as vice president of advisor marketing since 2021. Her arrival at Farther coincides with 16 advisors spanning $1.7 billion in AUM getting set to depart independent broker-dealer Commonwealth to join Farther, which announced in July that it passed $13 billion in recruited assets.

“I’ve built my career on supporting talented financial advisors in reaching new clients and showcasing their expertise. Looking ahead, with so much technological innovation reshaping wealth management, Farther stood out as a firm poised to capture the future while keeping advisors at the center," Howes said in a statement to InvestmentNews. "Its Intelligent Wealth Platform empowers advisors to deepen client relationships and deliver even greater service. That combination of innovation and an advisor-first culture is what drew me here, and I’m excited to share that story and support Farther’s growing team of wealth advisors during this moment of immense growth.”

Advisors departing their Commonwealth affiliation to join Farther include Trevor Conlon (Delaware), Joshua Wilcoxson (Colorado), Craig Stearns (Connecticut), Ryan Huard (Massachusetts), Marty Gaughan (Chicago), Andrea Winterer (Mass.), Trent Byerly (Virginia), Brian LaHue (Indiana), Taylor Lloyd (Florida), and David Pagels (Wisconsin). Winterer, who founded E3 Financial Planning in 2009, leads the group with $350 million in AUM while the rest manage between $30 million to $90 million each.

“After 10 uncommonly great years at Commonwealth Financial Network, I'm choosing to pursue a new opportunity,” Howes wrote in a LinkedIn post. "I learned from our passionate and inspiring leaders about how to create immediate and long-lasting value for our advisors. They took the time to celebrate our collective success and ensured that we had a fun and positive place to work.”

LPL Financial announced its $2.7 billion deal in March to buy rival Commonwealth. In LPL’s Q2 earnings call earlier this month, CEO Rich Steinmeier said LPL was confident in its goal of retaining 90% of the roughly 3,000 Commonwealth advisors. The race to recruit defecting Commonwealth advisors has spanned competition from firms such as Raymond James, Kestra Financial, Cetera Financial Group, Ameriprise, Osaic, Cambridge Investment Research.

Farther has been actively expanding its platform, debuting an AI-powered investment proposal tool in July to automate portfolio pitches. In Q2 alone, the firm added 27 advisors across 15 states and expects to nearly triple its AUM by early 2025.

“In exploring RIAs to move my practice to, I was looking for a firm that provided a service team to handle the service work that took me away from the more valuable work of spending time with clients, elevating my deliverable, and growing my practice," said Stearns, who manages $30m and joins Farther as VP, wealth advisor. "Farther has really delivered on this in a big way, and I am very happy I made the move.”