Young UBS Team With $770 Million Goes Indie With Sanctuary

The latest advisors to join Sanctuary’s network call their new independent firm Marble Wealth. The group includes CEO Partner Matthew Murphy, COO Partner Rebecca Baker, and Chief Investment Officer Adam Rogers, who previously worked as a portfolio manager at The Retirement Systems of Alabama, the administrator of the state’s employee pension fund. It’s a young group of wealth managers, especially for a profession in which the average advisor is in their 50s. Baker and Rogers are 41, while Murphy is 38.

They say they made the move because of the growing strength of the independent advisor sector, the opportunity to become true entrepreneurs, and the ability to structure their practice as they see fit. The advisors did not consider going to another wirehouse or other employee brokerage.

“We’re young, we’ve got energy, and we want to build something. Going to another wirehouse wouldn’t enable us to do that,” Baker says.

They had considered, but passed on the idea of opening their own registered investment advisory firm. “When you consider all the things that it takes to open an RIA, all that work takes away from time with your clients,” Murphy says.

Sanctuary was a happy middle ground, offering independence with support and flexibility. (The firm provides back office, asset management, and other services.)

“They let us do it our way, and that’s important to us. We know our clients and their needs,” Baker says.

Baker and Murphy have been team members for about six years. Baker had previously worked at

Morgan Stanley
.
They say they’ve known Rogers as a friend for years. Murphy had worked at UBS for 15 years, and says he is fond of the firm and the people who work there, but his team had outgrown the wirehouse model.

The team’s clients include business owners, retirees and families, many of whom live in Alabama or neighboring states.

“We can decide how we want to grow, who we want to hire–all the things we couldn’t do in a wirehouse model,” Murphy says.

For Sanctuary, it’s the firm’s first team in Alabama—but not its first hire this year. The Indianapolis-based company has picked up a slew of big advisor teams elsewhere in the country. In June, Sanctuary added a Merrill Lynch team that managed $1.2 billion in Short Hills, N.J.

Sanctuary was founded in 2018 and is led by former wirehouse managers, including CEO Jim Dickson who previously worked at Merrill Lynch. The company has more than 80 partner firms operating in 27 states, and it has approximately $25 billion in assets under advisement.

Write to Andrew Welsch at andrew.welsch@barrons.com