Brian M. Woods Financial Services, a large office of supervisory jurisdiction with 30 advisors and $1.6 billion in client assets, has left Voya Financial Advisors, in the wake of Cetera Financial’s acquisition of Voya’s financial planning channel. The Danvers, Mass.–based team has joined LPL Financial as an OSJ.
The firm is made up of Brian Woods; his wife, Bonnie Woods; and full-time assistant Gina Vaysburd.
Brian Woods
The move to LPL strengthened Brian Woods’ plans to grow his firm. In a statement, he said, with the offerings, tools “and the protection for my advisors through succession planning, we believe there are significant opportunities to recruit more advisors to our team.”
LPL has over 18,000 financial advisors and 450 RIA firms. Woods sees opportunity among LPL advisors looking to retire and sell their practice to a colleague that matches their business style.
Brian M. Woods Financial Services was with Voya for five years prior to the sale to Cetera.
In June, when the deal closed, Cetera said it had retained more than 90% of the 900 Voya financial advisors and 93% of the assets under administration. The Voya advisors have joined Cetera Advisor Networks, the firm’s regional director model, as the broker/dealer’s largest enterprise, with approximately $37 billion in assets.
LPL has announced some big recruiting wins in the past few weeks. This week, the firm added Larry Boggs, a Cumberland, Md.–based advisor with $1.3 billion under management, from Wells Fargo Advisors under its Strategic Wealth Services model. And earlier this month, mutual insurance company CUNA Mutual Group announced plans to transition its retail wealth management business, which includes 550 advisors across nearly 300 credit unions, to LPL Financial’s brokerage and advisory platform.