Fidelity: Breakaway broker assets on the rise

Fidelity Investments says it is seeing the average assets of its breakaway broker teams increasing. In a release yesterday, the firm said that for the first half of the year, average assets for breakaway teams that established their own RIA firm on Fidelity's platform increased 65%, compared to the first six months of 2009. Among the new RIAs the firm brought on board were 13 teams with $250 million or more in assets each, about double the number of such large practices Fidelity landed last year over the same period, according to spokesman Steve Austin. Larger teams have waited on the sidelines longer than many of the smaller producers at the wirehouses, he said. And as more large teams go independent, they refer others, Mr. Austin said. "The overall breakaway movement almost feeds on itself," he said. In total, through the first half of the year, about 95 individual brokers and teams with nearly $7 billion in assets joined Fidelity, either setting up their own RIA, joining an existing advisory firm or affiliating with an independent broker-dealer that clears through Fidelity.