An Ohio-based financial planning team with about $300 million in managed assets is now affiliated with Cetera Financial Group. Skafco, which includes advisors Rod Skaf and Wayne Niles, will be joining Cetera from MassMutual.
The team operates out of Dublin, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and will affiliate with Cetera Investors, the b/d’s branch community, which formed in 2019.
“The resources and support that Cetera provides stand out in so many areas that are important to the long-term health and success of our practice,” the duo said in a statement. “Cetera’s digital strategies and marketing expertise will help us grow our business in new ways, and the integration has made our onboarding much smoother than we could have anticipated.”
Skaf has been in the industry since 1996. For MassMutual, he was with MSI Financial Services and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, according to BrokerCheck. Skaf originally worked as a civil engineer, and splits his time between Dublin and Dallas. Niles has been in the industry for more than three decades, with a specialization in investment management. He’d also previously been at MSI and was with New England Securities Corporation for almost 13 years, according to his BrokerCheck profile.
According to John Pierce, head of business development at Cetera, the firm recently hired two senior recruiters to Cetera in order to focus on the Mid-Atlantic region, and was promoting within the company to fill a position to bolster the firm’s Midwest growth plans.
“Skafco is yet another large entity to recruit advisors to join, and merging their compelling value proposition with the enterprise resources of Cetera Financial Group combine for an attractive solution for many advisors," he said.
The affiliation with Skafco is the latest partnership Cetera’s announced this year. In late March, Hays Breard Financial Group, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, financial advisory team with $327 million in managed assets, joined Summit Financial Networks, a region of Cetera. The duo of Michael Breard and Ray Hays joined Summit from LPL.
In January, InTouch Wealth Advisors, a four-person team managing about $200 million, departed MassMutual to join Cetera via Wilde Wealth Management, an Arizona-based firm. As of the end of 2021, Cetera had about $122 billion in assets under management and $353 billion in assets under administration.