Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
By 
December 07, 2020 at 01:05 PM
Lawrence Glazer (left), Lloyd Glazer and Steven Dimitriou of Mayflower Advisors
Boston-based RIA Mayflower Advisors has selected BNY Mellon’s Pershing as its primary custodian and broker-dealer for advisory assets after breaking away from Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network (FiNet) after 15 years.
The boutique investment and financial advisory firm has $3.75 billion in assets under management and has become “fully independent.”
Led by the father-and-son team of Lloyd and Lawrence Glazer, as well as Steven Dimitriou, the group includes 35 staff and has had 16-19% annualized asset growth from 2010-2020.
About 60-65% of Mayflower’s assets are in corporate retirement plans, with clients that include startups and large firms across a variety of sectors such as biotech, lodging, pro sports, technology and pharmaceutics, along with non-profit groups, according to Dimitriou.
The other 35-40% of assets are owned by individual clients, who are mostly high net worth and mass affluent, he said in a recent interview.
“Steve, Larry and I have worked together since 1999 and opened our first office back in 2002,” according to Lloyd Glazer.
“Mayflower Advisors has always been rooted in relationships,” he explained. “We view this Mayflower team and our three generations of clients as family, and it’s a privilege to help our clients meet their long-term goals — in both good times and challenging ones like we’ve seen this past year.”
‘True Independence’
“There’s different flavors of independence in the industry,” Lawrence Glazer told ThinkAdvisor. What Mayflower now has is “true independence from top to bottom in terms of all the decisions you make every day — not only as a business owner, but in terms of technology and all the tools, how you staff, how you service clients,” he explained.
Many firms classify themselves as independent RIAs, the junior Glazer said, but they’re really “IINOs — independent in name only — because they’re not really independent. They can’t make any of the decisions independently in terms of technology or any of the things that affect their clients or how they invest in their business.”
Related: 40% of Advisors Say Switching Firms Is Easier Than Before Pandemic
The move to Pershing “gives us the freedom to invest directly in the areas that most benefit our clients at a time when the industry is really doing the opposite and is cutting back,” he said.
