Advisor Group Adds Kimmell From RBC to Head Business Development
She will oversee recruitment, transitions and onboarding across Advisor Group's network of six firms.
Advisor Group has appointed industry veteran Kristen Kimmell as executive vice president of business development, an expanded role at the company in which she will oversee recruitment, advisor transitions and onboarding of clients across all six firms in the Advisor Group network, it said Wednesday.
Kimmell joins the company from RBC Wealth Management, where she served in multiple senior leadership roles, most recently as head of advisor recruiting and field marketing for that firm’s U.S. operations.
Under her leadership as co-executive sponsor of RBC’s Women’s Association of Financial Advisors, the organization doubled the number of women in field leadership roles.
Kimmell will manage Advisor Group’s third-party recruiters, with a “goal of deepening engagement with existing recruiters and forming new relationships,” it said.
Central to her efforts will be the creation of an end-to-end service experience, Advisor Group said.
The goals are to: align the recruiting, transitions and onboarding process to deliver an “enhanced, frictionless experience”; digitize the recruiting process by integrating the firm’s eQuipt digital account opening and client management platform with a new technology initiative that “will significantly streamline and shorten the end-to-end experience”; and develop a “repeatable, consistent approach to business development efforts across the Advisor Group network,” it said.
Kimmell will start at Advisor Group in early August. Gregg Johnson, who had headed recruiting for Advisor Group, is leaving the company.
Kimmell’s appointment represents a “significant advancement” of Advisor Group’s growth strategy, it said. Her appointment is part of the company’s “broader strategy for expanding its reach to attract a wider cross-section of the financial advisor community, including sophisticated ensemble and enterprise firms, bank advisors, wirehouse breakaways and hybrid professionals,” it said.
Kimmell will report directly to Greg Cornick, Advisor Group president of advice and wealth management.
She will also partner closely with Erinn Ford, executive vice president of advisor engagement; Susan Theder, chief marketing officer; and the presidents of the firms that make up the Advisor Group network: FSC Securities, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial, Securities America, Triad Advisors and Woodbury Financial Services.
“When you couple Advisor Group’s commitment to delivering an exceptional advisor experience with its extensive investments in technology, talent and advisor growth resources, it’s clear that the company has an incredibly powerful platform, and I’m excited to tell that story more broadly to the financial advisor community,” Kimmell said in a statement.
Advisor Group now serves about 10,100 financial professionals and oversees over $475 billion in client assets.