Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
February 28, 2013 at 09:27 AM
Raymond James (RJF) said Tuesday it had wrapped up the conversion of Morgan Keegan operations and clients into Raymond James’ technology systems, and the Morgan Keegan brand had been retired.
The St. Petersburg, Fla.-based broker-dealer says that over the 10-month integration, more than 500,000 client accounts were transferred from Morgan Keegan to Raymond James. To make this happen, conversion specialists were trained and deployed to about 100 branches.
“It’s been really exciting that throughout the integration and combining of our firms, we have kept a critical focus on retaining all financial advisors from Raymond James and Morgan Keegan with very high service levels and Private Client Group leadership, which planned, prepared and executed the conversion extremely well,” said Tash Elwyn (left), president of Raymond James & Associates-Private Client Group, the firm’s traditional employee channel, in an interview with AdvisorOne. “And at the same time, we’ve delivered many new IT applications to FAs that continue to enhance our competitive position within the industry.”
The broker-dealer field does not always get IT conversions “right.” In fact, the merger of Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney attracted a lot of negative press due to the perceived slow, complicated nature of the transition of Smith Barney reps to the Morgan Stanley platform.
Raymond James seems to have learned from the experience of other firms. In November 2011, it hired Vincent Campagnoli to become head of Private Client Group technology strategy and development. Before joining Raymond James, Campagnoli held senior-level positions at UBS Wealth Management-Americas (UBS), Morgan Stanley (UBS) and Prudential/Wachovia Securities (now part of Wells Fargo).
Most important, in each of these three prior roles, Raymond James says, Campagnoli worked closely with Bella Loykhter Allaire. Allaire was hired by Raymond James in June 2011 to become the firm’s executive vice president of technology and operations.
“Above and beyond, we built a team within the two firms of 100 conversion trainers who were Raymond James and Morgan Keegan associates and not outside consultants,” explained Elwyn. “They know systems and were trained in systems, and perhaps most important, they know the culture and they care.”
These 100 “conversion trainers” were put into the Morgan Keegan branches in mid-February, so the integration could take place over the three-day President’s Day weekend. By Feb. 19, everything was branded Raymond James, according to the company.
