RJ ramping up its custody business

Raymond James's Investment Advisors Division may be a relatively small player in the custody space but company executives have set their sights on larger advisers. Indeed, managers at the unit have set a goal of quadrupling the division's current $6 billion of assets under administration. "We want to serve [advisers with] $100 million [in assets] and reach $25 billion in assets under administration," said Mike Di Girolamo, head of the IAD unit, at a meeting today for the firm's advisers in St. Petersburg, Fla. Raymond James' IAD unit serves about 80 RIA firms, which have an average of more than $70 million in assets each. Like others in the industry, Raymond James saw recruiting slow in the first half of the year. "But we've seen a huge increase in interest in the last quarter," Mr. Di Girolamo said. "We have the strongest pipeline of advisers committed to join at any point since we started the [custody] division," he said to the 90 advisers attending the event. The custody unit has six new firms in transition to Raymond James now, five of them with more than $100 million in assets, he said. Mr. Di Girolamo said the firm is upgrading its technology to move away from account-based functionality to an interface based on relationships. A new financial planning tool will be integrated into advisers' workstations within the next 12 months, he said, although the name of the new planning software has not been announced. In the first quarter of next year, IAD will make available financing for its RIAs who want to buy other practices. Approval will be based on Raymond James' own determination of the value of a merger candidate, and the abilities of the advisers involved to successfully transition the new practice.