Ladenburg Thalmann has tapped Thayer Gallison, former vice president for investment research and product due diligence at Advisor Group, as head of due diligence, a newly created position. Gallison will lead the firm’s new enterprise-wide due diligence platform.
The platform is the first of many new initiatives that Ladenburg plans to roll out in the coming months—now that the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule is on the backburner.
“Now that our industry enjoys a greater level of regulatory clarity, we are actively deploying Ladenburg’s substantial resources to roll out targeted new platforms and solutions that directly support our subsidiary firms and the work they do for financial advisors and their clients in this new environment,” said Adam Malamed, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Ladenburg.
Due diligence is currently provided at the b/d level, and each firm has its own product platform; that won’t change with this initiative.
“The change here with Thayer and his rule is really to take the existing due diligence personnel and take them out of their existing relationship directly with each of their independent firms and move them into a reporting relationship with Thayer,” said Craig Timm, chief risk officer at Ladenburg.
The new platform is meant to augment what was already in place at Ladenburg’s five firms—Securities America, Triad Advisors, Investacorp, KMS Financial Services and Securities Service Network.
“The project and the platform itself is intended to fulfill that more detailed product analysis, traditional due diligence, ongoing performance monitoring of our products that are made available through each of our five independent advisory and brokerage firms,” Timm said.
Ladenburg has more than 4,000 advisors across the five independent broker/dealer subsidiaries.