A $1.7B UBS Team Joined RBC. The Bigger Shift Is Happening Inside Employee Advice.
Two large advisor moves announced on the same day looked, at first, like another simple recruiting scoreboard. RBC Wealth Management pulled an eight-person UBS team overseeing approximately $1.7 billion into its new Westchester, New York, office, while LPL Financial’s Linsco employee channel recruited Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski from Baird with approximately $870 million in advisory, brokerage and retirement plan assets. Together, the moves represented roughly $2.57 billion in reported client assets changing platforms.
The InvestmentNews report naturally emphasized the firms gaining and losing those assets. RBC’s Hudson River Wealth Management addition was particularly significant because it was the third billion-dollar-plus UBS recruiting win highlighted by the publication in less than a month, while LPL added another experienced practice to an employee channel it has increasingly used to recruit advisors who want greater autonomy without assuming every responsibility of operating an independent firm.
The more interesting connection between the moves is that neither winning firm was selling traditional independence. Hudson River Wealth Management remained inside a large employee wealth-management organization at RBC. Narmi and Rynaski also remained W-2 advisors by choosing Linsco. Yet both moves involved ideas commonly associated with the independent movement: local practice identity, greater control, sophisticated technology, client-centered flexibility and the ability to shape a practice around a particular clientele.
That is where the recruiting market is becoming harder to categorize. Independence has spent years pressuring wirehouses and regional firms to give successful advisors more control, but the response is no longer limited to launching new 1099 channels. Employee models themselves are evolving. RBC is competing by combining the resources of a global financial institution with a focused push into ultra-high-net-worth advice, while LPL has deliberately constructed Linsco as a W-2 model that borrows several features from independence.
The July 2025 moves therefore reveal something larger than RBC taking assets from UBS or LPL taking assets from Baird. They show that the old line between “employee advisor” and “independent advisor” is becoming less useful for understanding what experienced teams actually want from a platform.
TL;DR
RBC added a $1.7 billion UBS team: Hudson River Wealth Management joined RBC’s newly established Westchester office with advisors Steven Solomon, Lauren Konstantin, Kevin Bertoncin and Roger Matles.
The move strengthened RBC’s ultra-high-net-worth push: RBC said the team serves ultra-high-net-worth households in the greater New York market and joined during a broader period of strong UBS recruiting.
Westchester quickly became strategically important: Another UBS team managing approximately $1.1 billion had joined RBC’s Westchester office shortly beforehand, making the location a visible recruiting beachhead.
LPL added $870 million from Baird: Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski launched The Narmi Group Investment Management through LPL’s Linsco employee-advisor channel in Omaha.
The Baird move was not a switch into full independence: Linsco is a W-2 model, but LPL says advisors can own their client relationships, control their brand and customize how they run the practice.
Technology was a major part of the LPL pitch: Rynaski cited LPL’s investments in integrated and streamlined technology alongside autonomy and flexibility.
The two practices serve different client markets: Hudson River is positioned around sophisticated high- and ultra-high-net-worth planning, while the Narmi team serves a mix that includes young professionals, nonprofit organizations and clients approaching or living in retirement.
Baird was not a weak incumbent: It is itself an employee-owned wealth-management firm with substantial private-wealth scale, making the Linsco win more revealing than a simple escape from a conventional corporate employer.
UBS faced a broader retention challenge: Hudson River’s departure occurred amid a run of large UBS teams moving to RBC and other competitors.
The larger advisor takeaway: W-2 affiliation increasingly comes in different forms, and advisors are comparing autonomy, client relationship control, technology, local identity, institutional resources and operational burden rather than simply choosing between employment and independence.
RBC Is Building A New York Ultra-High-Net-Worth Recruiting Beachhead
Hudson River Wealth Management did more than increase RBC’s asset count. The team joined a newly opened Westchester office at a moment when RBC was making a concentrated push into one of the country’s most competitive markets for affluent and ultra-high-net-worth clients. The group brought four advisors and four business or client associates from UBS and approximately $1.7 billion in client assets, according to InvestmentNews.
The advisors were not arriving alone in the broader strategic sense. RBC had recently added the Centennial Wealth Management Group, another former UBS team with approximately $1.1 billion, to the same Westchester location. Earlier in June 2025, RBC had also recruited three UBS advisors in St. Paul, Boise and Beverly Hills who collectively oversaw another $1.1 billion. That concentration made RBC’s UBS recruiting activity look less like isolated opportunism and more like a deliberate effort to capture experienced teams serving wealthier households.
RBC was already a sizable U.S. wealth platform. The firm reported approximately $640 billion in U.S. client assets and more than 2,200 financial advisors across 42 states as of April 30, 2025. That scale placed RBC in a position to recruit as an institutional alternative rather than asking wirehouse advisors to trade a large platform for a dramatically smaller environment.
Hudson River Brought A Multigenerational Team, Not Just Four Producers
The asset figure can obscure the depth of the practice.
Hudson River’s current RBC team page shows a group spanning multiple generations and roles. Steven Solomon serves as managing director and financial advisor, Lauren Konstantin as managing director, financial advisor and portfolio manager, Kevin Bertoncin and Roger Matles as senior vice presidents and financial advisors, while Leonard Solomon continues as a senior financial associate after a career that began in 1960. The group also includes experienced registered and client-service professionals.
That composition matters when the client base includes families whose wealth relationships may last for decades. An advisor team serving ultra-high-net-worth households is often managing more than a portfolio. It may be coordinating investment management with lending, estate planning, philanthropy, business transitions and next-generation family relationships. A multigenerational advisory team can itself become part of the succession proposition because clients see people at different career stages who may remain with the relationship long after one senior advisor retires.
RBC’s ability to recruit that kind of team is strategically important because ultra-high-net-worth relationships tend to require the very infrastructure large integrated firms believe can differentiate them: banking access, customized credit, sophisticated portfolios, estate and wealth planning and institutional investment capabilities. RBC’s U.S. wealth business explicitly positions itself around high-net-worth and institutional clients and access to private banking, credit, investment management and related resources.
The move therefore was not RBC trying to imitate an independent RIA. It was RBC making a different promise: keep the scale and institutional depth of a major financial organization while changing the environment around the advisor team.
Westchester Became More Than A New Branch Address
The location is another part of the story that deserves more attention.
Opening an office is relatively easy. Filling it quickly with billions of dollars of established advisor relationships is much harder.
Hudson River Wealth Management and Centennial Wealth Management Group now operate from RBC’s Westchester location in Purchase, New York. Their current RBC pages continue to identify the same Westchester address, giving the office a substantial local advisor presence rather than making it a nominal expansion point.
That has strategic value because the greater New York wealth market is not limited to Manhattan. Westchester and surrounding communities include executives, business owners, multigenerational families and professionals who may prefer sophisticated advice closer to where they live or operate businesses.
A Branch Can Become A Recruiting Flywheel
Successful advisor recruiting can change the economics of a new office.
The first major team gives the location credibility. The second reduces the perception that the office is experimental. Additional hires then have evidence that the buyer is committed to the region, has invested in local management and already supports sizable practices nearby.
That can create a recruiting flywheel.
RBC can tell another New York-area advisor that the firm is not merely promising future investment in Westchester. It can point to existing billion-dollar teams already operating there. The location gains local management experience, service capacity and a peer community that may matter to teams evaluating whether a move will feel isolating.
The current Hudson River and Centennial presence suggests RBC followed through on that branch-building strategy rather than using the office simply as a temporary landing spot for one recruiting announcement.
This helps explain why RBC’s 2025 UBS recruiting deserves to be understood geographically as well as financially. The firm was not only moving assets between corporate logos. It was building clusters of advisor talent in markets where those teams could reinforce a broader regional presence.
UBS Was Feeding Competitors At Exactly The Wrong End Of The Market
Hudson River’s departure also mattered because it fit a pattern.
InvestmentNews described RBC’s hire as another major loss for UBS during a period when the wirehouse was facing substantial advisor attrition. The Hudson River move followed the $1.1 billion Centennial departure and other UBS advisors moving to RBC in multiple markets.
NJ Financial News has examined that broader UBS attrition problem, including the tension between changes UBS was making to improve the economics of its U.S. wealth business and the risk that advisor departures could undermine the client relationships producing those economics.
The significance of a $1.7 billion departure is not only the asset total.
It is the type of relationship leaving.
Ultra-High-Net-Worth Teams Are Expensive To Replace
A large advisor practice can represent years of trust accumulated across families, business owners and institutions. Recruiting another advisor with a similar asset figure does not automatically recreate the same revenue profile, client demographics or referral network.
Ultra-high-net-worth relationships can be particularly valuable because one household may use multiple services across investment management, lending, alternatives, estate coordination and cash management.
That creates deeper economics for the platform.
It also makes the relationship attractive to competitors.
When RBC recruits a team like Hudson River, it is not merely gaining a group of financial advisors. It is gaining the opportunity to deepen relationships with clients who may require several sophisticated services across multiple generations.
For UBS, those are precisely the relationships a large global wealth organization generally wants to retain.
That is why attrition at the upper end of the advisor market can create disproportionate strategic pressure even when overall advisor headcount remains large.
RBC’s Answer To Independence Is Institutional Mobility
It would be tempting to read Hudson River’s move as part of the broad trend toward advisor independence.
That would be imprecise.
The team did not leave UBS to build an independent RIA. It moved from one large employee-oriented institution to another.
What changed was the institution behind the practice.
That is a reminder that not every dissatisfied wirehouse team wants entrepreneurship. Some advisors still value being employees because they do not want to manage payroll, negotiate vendor agreements, build cybersecurity infrastructure or create a compliance department. They simply want a different employer with stronger resources, better economics, different management or a more compelling strategy for the clients they serve.
The Full-Service Employee Model Still Has Powerful Advantages
For a large ultra-high-net-worth team, an institutional employee platform can provide:
integrated investment products and research,
banking and credit,
centralized supervision,
established cybersecurity systems,
trust and estate resources,
alternative-investment access,
client reporting,
support staff infrastructure,
brand recognition,
and the financial strength of a large parent organization.
RBC’s current U.S. positioning emphasizes many of those capabilities, particularly private banking, credit and sophisticated wealth solutions for affluent clients.
The trade-off is that the advisor operates inside the institution’s policies, compensation framework, technology stack and management structure.
Hudson River’s move shows that employee advisors can respond to that trade-off without abandoning employment entirely. They can simply move to an institution whose version of the employee model better matches the next phase of the practice.
That is an important distinction from the independent-breakaway story.
RBC is not asking advisors to become entrepreneurs.
It is asking them to choose RBC as the institution where their existing enterprise can operate more effectively.
The Narmi Group Move Is More Disruptive To The Old Employee-Advisor Categories
The Baird-to-Linsco move is conceptually different.
Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski also remained employee advisors, but Linsco is explicitly designed to make employment feel less like the traditional employee model.
LPL describes Linsco as a modern W-2 affiliation structure that combines employee status with several features commonly associated with independence. Its current materials say advisors can build value, own their client relationships, control their brand and customize their practices without assuming every responsibility involved in operating a stand-alone business.
That makes the Narmi move more strategically interesting than the raw $870 million figure suggests.
Baird is already an employee-owned firm with substantial wealth-management resources and a culture built heavily around advisor and employee ownership. The company’s 2025 annual report said Private Wealth Management had more than $375 billion in client assets, and Baird describes itself as one of the largest privately held, employee-owned financial-services firms in the United States.
Narmi and Rynaski therefore were not simply fleeing a stereotypically bureaucratic wirehouse.
They were leaving one distinctive employee environment for another.
Linsco Sells A Hybrid Identity Without Making Advisors Independent Contractors
The public rationale for the move helps explain what LPL is trying to accomplish.
Narmi and Rynaski said they were looking for greater autonomy, flexibility and improved technology. Rynaski also said LPL offered the backing of a large firm while giving the team greater independence in how it serves clients.
Those comments are revealing because they sound very similar to the language used in independent-channel recruiting.
The legal and operating structure is different.
Linsco advisors are W-2 employees.
That distinction affects business ownership, operating responsibility, supervision, benefits and other elements of the relationship. Yet LPL intentionally markets the channel around client-relationship ownership, local identity and practice flexibility.
W-2 Status No Longer Tells You How Entrepreneurial The Practice Feels
The industry’s old categories are becoming less descriptive.
A W-2 advisor may work in a heavily centralized environment where the institution controls most elements of branding and practice operations.
Another W-2 advisor may work through Linsco, use a customized local practice identity and have more authority over how the team presents itself and grows.
A 1099 independent contractor may technically own a business but rely heavily on a broker-dealer for products, technology and supervision.
An RIA owner may have the greatest formal business autonomy but outsource most operations to a supported-independence platform.
The legal affiliation still matters.
It simply does not tell the entire business story anymore.
That is the significance of Linsco.
LPL is attempting to compete for advisors who like the idea of independence but do not necessarily want its full operating burden.
NJ Financial News has seen the same argument in a related $600 million Linsco move, where former UBS advisors chose the employee channel for a combination of autonomy, local identity, technology and centralized support.
The Narmi deal extends that proposition into the regional-firm market.
Baird’s Employee Ownership Makes The Departure More Interesting
Baird is a difficult firm to reduce to the usual “large institution versus entrepreneurial advisor” narrative.
The company is privately held and employee-owned. Its 2025 annual report said approximately 81% of associates across the firm were shareholders, while its Private Wealth Management business exceeded $375 billion in client assets.
That structure gives Baird a different cultural proposition from publicly traded wirehouses.
The firm argues that employee ownership creates long-term alignment and gives associates a direct stake in client outcomes.
Narmi and Rynaski still left.
That does not establish a broader Baird retention problem, nor does the public record support assuming dissatisfaction beyond the reasons the team itself identified. It does make their stated priorities more informative.
Autonomy Can Mean Something Different From Equity Ownership
Baird’s employee-ownership model gives many employees a financial stake in the larger company.
Linsco’s pitch centers more directly on control over the individual advisor practice and client relationships.
Those are two different forms of ownership.
An advisor might value equity in the national firm.
Another may place greater value on shaping the local practice identity, determining how the team grows or controlling the client relationship more directly.
Narmi and Rynaski’s public comments emphasized the latter themes: autonomy, flexibility, technology and serving clients in the team’s preferred manner.
That makes the recruiting battle more sophisticated.
Firms are no longer competing only over payout.
They are competing over which layer of the business the advisor wants to control.
The Narmi Client Base Explains Why Flexibility Mattered
The Narmi Group’s clients also differ materially from Hudson River’s ultra-high-net-worth positioning.
LPL said Narmi and Rynaski serve a mix of young professionals, nonprofit organizations and clients who are approaching or already in retirement. The pair had worked together for two decades and described their practice as a “one-stop-shop” that often helps clients with practical life decisions extending beyond investment portfolios.
That service model can create a particular kind of technology and workflow pressure.
A practice serving several client segments needs systems flexible enough to support very different financial lives. A nonprofit organization can have investment-policy, liquidity and governance issues. A young professional may need savings, insurance and early wealth-building guidance. A retiree may care more about Social Security, healthcare, required distributions, income planning and estate coordination.
Service-Heavy Practices Feel Operational Friction Quickly
When advisors describe helping clients research nursing homes or navigate Social Security questions, the practice is signaling that client service extends into time-intensive, highly personal work.
That makes inefficient technology especially costly.
Every hour staff members spend navigating duplicate systems, manually transferring information or waiting for home-office answers is an hour that cannot be spent helping clients.
Rynaski specifically pointed to LPL’s investment in integrated and streamlined technology as part of the reason for choosing the platform.
The important question is therefore not whether LPL has more technology than Baird.
The sources do not establish that.
The relevant point is that the Narmi team believed LPL’s combination of technology, scale and operating flexibility better fit how it wanted to run the next stage of the practice.
That is a much narrower and more defensible recruiting conclusion.
Local Branding Is Becoming An Employee-Channel Weapon
“The Narmi Group Investment Management” is also strategically important as a name.
The practice did not simply arrive as a generic LPL branch.
It launched with its own market-facing identity.
That is increasingly common across Linsco, whose model explicitly lets advisors control their brands while remaining W-2 employees.
The practice name can matter because clients often identify more strongly with the advisor team than with the national broker-dealer supporting it.
A Local Brand Can Strengthen Continuity
An advisor changing firms usually has to explain why the corporate relationship is changing.
Keeping a recognizable team identity can reduce some of that disruption.
The client sees that the advisors remain together, the practice retains its own name and the relationship still centers on the people the client already knows.
That is particularly useful for multigenerational practices.
Narmi is a second-generation advisor, while he and Rynaski have worked together for approximately two decades.
A local brand can eventually support a practice identity that outlives one individual advisor.
That creates succession value.
The client may think of the relationship as belonging to “The Narmi Group” rather than only to Charlie Narmi or to a distant national institution.
LPL benefits because the brand helps advisors feel more entrepreneurial without requiring them to leave the employee structure.
The advisor benefits because the practice can build an identity that appears more durable and locally controlled.
Client Relationship Ownership Is The More Important Linsco Phrase
Brand control gets attention because clients can see it.
Client-relationship ownership may be more strategically significant.
LPL says Linsco advisors can own their client relationships even while participating in its employee model.
That is a major philosophical departure from the traditional assumption that employee advisors primarily build relationships belonging to the institution.
The distinction can influence recruiting, succession and advisor psychology.
Relationship Control Changes How Advisors Think About Their Careers
An experienced advisor may care about several questions:
Can I move the relationship if the firm changes direction?
Can I hand the practice to another advisor?
Can younger members of the team become meaningful successors?
Does the client base create business value associated with the practice?
Can the team maintain its identity through future leadership changes?
How much control does the national firm have over how the practice grows?
A platform offering greater relationship control can feel more entrepreneurial even if the advisor receives a W-2.
That is why Linsco occupies an unusual recruiting position.
It allows LPL to approach advisors who may be attracted to independence but are unwilling to assume full responsibility for office operations, payroll, compliance infrastructure and vendor management.
The model offers them another stopping point on the spectrum.
Linsco Also Lets Advisors Delegate The Parts Of Independence They May Not Want
The attraction of independence often sounds strongest before the operational checklist arrives.
Running an advisory business requires more than serving clients. Someone has to manage staff, facilities, compliance, marketing, cybersecurity, technology, payroll and daily operational problems.
Linsco removes or centralizes many of those responsibilities while preserving selected elements of local control.
LPL says advisors in the channel receive support from branch management, marketing resources and its integrated wealth platform, allowing them to delegate more middle- and back-office work.
That creates a practical middle ground.
The Trade-Off Is Control Versus Burden
The affiliation spectrum can be understood this way:
Model
Advisor Control
Operating Burden
Typical Strategic Appeal
Traditional employee platform
Moderate
Low
Institutional resources and simplicity
Linsco-style employee model
Moderate to high in selected areas
Low to moderate
W-2 support with brand and relationship flexibility
Independent broker-dealer
High
Moderate to high
Business ownership with broker-dealer infrastructure
Supported independent RIA
High
Moderate
Ownership with outsourced operations
Stand-alone RIA
Very high
High
Maximum business and platform control
The table simplifies models that can vary widely by firm, but it shows why Linsco can compete against both employee firms and independent channels.
The product is not simply employment.
It is a specific balance between autonomy and operational delegation.
RBC And Linsco Are Competing For Different Advisor Psychology
This is where the two July 2025 moves belong together.
RBC and LPL both hired experienced advisors into employee structures.
They were not selling the same psychological proposition.
RBC’s proposition to Hudson River is institutional: bring a sophisticated ultra-high-net-worth practice into another globally connected wealth platform with substantial banking, credit and investment resources.
Linsco’s proposition to the Narmi team is hybrid: remain an employee but gain more local control, brand flexibility and client-relationship ownership than advisors may associate with a traditional W-2 environment.
RBC Says The Institution Can Be Better
For an advisor who still values employee simplicity, the most important question is whether the new institution offers better resources, culture, economics or strategic positioning.
That is where RBC competes.
Its current U.S. wealth proposition is explicitly oriented toward high-net-worth and institutional clients and emphasizes access to banking and credit alongside wealth management.
The advisor remains inside a large system because the system itself is part of the value proposition.
Linsco Says Employment Can Feel More Like Your Own Practice
LPL is making a different argument.
It tells advisors they do not have to choose between corporate employment and operating a completely independent business.
The firm can remain the employer while the advisor gains more control over the client-facing practice.
That can appeal to veteran advisors who want fewer operational constraints but do not want to spend the next decade managing an independent-company infrastructure.
Neither model is inherently superior.
They satisfy different preferences.
The UBS And Baird Losses Should Not Be Flattened Into The Same Retention Story
The source firms also lost for different reasons.
UBS lost Hudson River during a wider period of advisor attrition that included several other high-value departures to RBC. That creates a broader strategic question about whether UBS could improve U.S. wealth economics without losing too many productive advisors and client relationships.
Baird’s loss does not carry the same evidence of a broader retention crisis.
The Narmi team’s public explanation focused on its own aspirations for autonomy, flexibility and technology.
That distinction matters because good trade journalism should not assume every departure proves a systemic weakness.
One Departure Can Still Reveal A Competitive Vulnerability
Even when a source firm remains strong, an individual move can show where competitors believe they have an opening.
LPL’s opening with Baird advisors appears to be the boundary between employee support and practice control.
Baird can point to employee ownership, culture, broad wealth-management resources and long-term stability.
Linsco can counter that an advisor can remain a W-2 employee while maintaining greater control over the client-facing brand and relationships.
That is a much more specific competitive contest than “big firm versus independence.”
Technology Is Becoming A Recruiting Argument Because Advisors Now See It As Capacity
The Narmi announcement also fits a larger shift in platform technology.
Technology used to be discussed primarily as operational infrastructure.
Advisors increasingly view it as a measure of how many clients the practice can serve without adding friction.
That changes the economics.
If better workflows allow a team to serve more households with the same number of employees, technology becomes a growth tool rather than merely an administrative convenience.
Integrated Systems Matter Most When Practices Become Complex
A mature team may use systems for:
customer relationship management,
financial planning,
portfolio management,
account opening,
client reporting,
risk analysis,
marketing,
compliance,
document storage,
retirement planning,
and service workflows.
The more disconnected those systems are, the more staff members have to move information manually.
That creates error risk and wastes time.
LPL’s public recruiting message around Linsco repeatedly emphasizes integrated technology as part of the model, including in the Narmi announcement.
Again, that does not prove LPL’s technology is objectively superior to Baird’s.
It shows that LPL has made technology a core part of its recruiting proposition and that the Narmi team considered the proposition important enough to cite publicly.
The Client Impact Depends On Which Move You Are Talking About
The two moves also create different client conversations.
Hudson River clients moved from UBS to another traditional full-service wealth organization.
Narmi clients moved from Baird to an LPL employee channel carrying a distinct local practice brand.
The operational experience and disclosures can therefore differ.
Hudson River Clients Are Comparing Institutions
For a Hudson River client, important questions include whether account access changes, which RBC services are now available, how investment or lending relationships transfer and whether existing portfolio strategies remain intact.
RBC’s current Hudson River materials also disclose that certain team members may receive compensation for referring customers to City National Bank, an RBC affiliate, and distinguish bank products from investment products offered through RBC Wealth Management.
That is the kind of relationship detail sophisticated clients should understand.
The move may increase access to integrated banking resources, but affiliated referral arrangements and the legal distinctions between banking and investment services remain relevant.
Narmi Clients Need To Understand The Local Brand And LPL Relationship
The Narmi Group Investment Management name can make the practice feel independent.
Clients should still understand that the advisors joined LPL’s employee channel and that securities and advisory services are offered through LPL Financial.
A local practice identity does not create a separate broker-dealer simply because the team uses its own brand.
Clients should know which regulated entity maintains the brokerage or advisory relationship, how fees may change, whether account paperwork or online access changes and which services now come from LPL rather than Baird.
Clear entity language becomes more important as employee channels borrow more of the visual identity associated with independent practices.
Compliance Has To Keep Pace With The Blurring Of Business Models
The evolution of employee channels creates a communication challenge for wealth firms.
The marketing message increasingly emphasizes autonomy.
The legal structure still has to remain clear.
A Linsco advisor may control a local brand and client relationships, but the advisor remains part of LPL’s employee channel. RBC teams can market themselves under distinctive team names while operating through RBC Wealth Management.
Those arrangements are normal.
The compliance risk comes when clients mistake brand identity for legal independence.
Local Identity And Legal Entity Are Two Different Layers
A client should be able to identify:
the team or practice serving the household,
the broker-dealer involved in brokerage services,
the registered investment adviser involved in advisory services,
the institution holding assets,
affiliated banking entities,
and any important conflicts or compensation arrangements.
As platforms create more affiliation models, those disclosures become more important rather than less.
Choice increases the number of ways an advisor practice can be structured.
It also increases the need to explain those structures without relying on industry jargon.
Multigenerational Practices Are Becoming Premium Recruiting Targets
Both sides of the story have a generational element.
Hudson River includes veteran and next-generation team members serving wealthy families through long-term relationships. Narmi is a second-generation advisor, while he and Rynaski have built a partnership extending over two decades.
That makes succession relevant even though neither announcement was presented primarily as a succession story.
A national firm recruiting a multigenerational practice is acquiring a relationship that may already have a continuity plan embedded in the team.
The Best Recruiting Win Can Last Beyond The Advisor Who Signs The Deal
Suppose a firm recruits a senior advisor managing $1 billion.
If the practice depends entirely on that advisor and the advisor retires five years later, the platform faces another retention event.
If the same practice includes younger advisors, experienced service professionals and a recognizable team identity, the relationship may persist for decades.
That makes team composition strategically important.
Firms want businesses that can transition from founder to successor without forcing the client assets back onto the recruiting market.
The current advisor war is therefore partly a war for succession-ready enterprises.
RBC gets that value from well-established multigenerational groups.
LPL can encourage it through locally branded Linsco practices that make the team identity larger than one individual advisor.
LPL’s Larger Scale Makes Linsco More Credible Than It Was As A New Experiment
Linsco also sits inside a much larger LPL than when the model was first introduced.
LPL currently reports more than 32,000 financial professionals and approximately $2.3 trillion in advisory and brokerage assets serviced and custodied as of March 2026.
Those figures reflect LPL’s broader expansion and should not be attributed to Linsco alone.
They matter because the employee channel can draw on the economics and infrastructure of the larger company.
The more scale LPL accumulates across independent advisors, institutions and acquired businesses, the more resources it can potentially invest in technology, product access and practice support that also benefit its employee channel.
Linsco Gives LPL A Recruiting Answer It Historically Needed
LPL built its identity around independent financial advisors.
That created a limitation when an experienced employee advisor liked the idea of more autonomy but did not want to become a 1099 contractor or independent business owner.
Linsco fills that gap.
The model allows LPL to compete directly with wirehouses and regional employee firms without abandoning the company’s broader language around advisor choice.
That strategic value is visible in related moves. NJ Financial News has followed how LPL used Linsco in its Boenning employee strategy, where the employee model gave LPL a way to accommodate an established regional wealth business while preserving elements of local identity.
The Narmi recruitment shows the same channel functioning at the individual-team level.
RBC’s Own Recruiting Success Does Not Make It Immune To Losing Advisors
RBC’s strong UBS recruiting also deserves balance.
Advisor movement is two-way.
NJ Financial News has covered a $1.1 billion RBC departure in which Lighthouse Private Wealth left RBC for LPL, showing that even a firm winning billion-dollar wirehouse teams remains vulnerable to competitors offering different ownership or affiliation structures.
That is an important counterweight to the July 2025 headline.
RBC can be the right destination for Hudson River and still be the wrong platform for another large team.
The advisor market does not produce a permanent winner.
It produces matches between practices and operating models.
Recruiting Success Changes The Next Competitive Question
Once a firm has enough institutional scale, the question becomes less about whether the firm has resources and more about whether the advisor wants those resources in that particular structure.
RBC has scale.
LPL has scale.
Baird has scale.
UBS has scale.
The differentiating issues increasingly become:
Who controls the client relationship?
How much local branding is available?
Which technology stack does the team prefer?
Does the advisor want W-2 employment?
Does the advisor want ownership in a local enterprise?
How much administrative responsibility is acceptable?
What kind of banking or lending infrastructure does the client base require?
How important is a national corporate brand?
Which platform makes succession easiest?
How does the culture feel after the recruiting bonus disappears?
That is a more complicated marketplace than a ranking of firm assets.
The Winning Employee Model May Be The One That Feels Least Generic
This is the broader lesson from RBC and Linsco.
Employee advice is not disappearing.
It is fragmenting into more distinct versions.
RBC’s model works when an advisor wants a global institution, sophisticated wealth capabilities and centralized support without taking on business ownership.
Linsco works when an advisor still wants W-2 support but also wants greater control over the local identity and client relationships.
Baird presents another version through a privately held, employee-owned culture.
UBS offers another through its global wealth platform.
The meaningful question is therefore not whether advisors prefer employment or independence.
It is what kind of employment they are willing to accept.
What Advisors Should Evaluate Before Moving Between Employee Platforms
These moves also suggest a diligence framework for advisors considering similar transitions.
A recruiting package is temporary.
The operating model remains after the transition money is gone.
Compare The Practice Five Years After The Move
Advisors should look beyond immediate economics and test several longer-term issues.
Client ownership and portability: Understand exactly what the agreement says about the client relationship and what happens if the advisor later leaves.
Brand control: Determine whether the practice can use a local identity and what happens to that identity if the relationship with the firm ends.
Technology integration: Ask for demonstrations using real workflows rather than relying on broad claims about innovation.
Service staffing: Identify who handles operational escalations and whether service capacity matches the size of the practice.
High-net-worth resources: Large teams should examine lending, alternatives, trust, estate-planning support and other capabilities actually used by sophisticated households.
Succession: Determine whether the platform can support internal transitions, junior-partner development and future retirement.
Compliance flexibility: Understand whether local practice freedom is compatible with the supervisory structure the team will actually encounter.
Culture after onboarding: Speak with advisors who joined several years earlier, not only recent recruits who are still in the transition period.
Those questions reveal more about the quality of a platform than the headline size of a recruiting package.
The Client Should Judge Outcomes, Not The Channel Label
Clients have even less reason to obsess over industry labels.
Most households do not need to know every technical distinction between a wirehouse, regional broker-dealer, Linsco-style employee channel and independent RIA.
They do need to understand the practical consequences.
A good move should improve or preserve the elements the client actually values: access to the advisor, planning quality, investment capabilities, service responsiveness, fee clarity and confidence that the practice can support the family over time.
Client Questions After An Advisor Move
Clients should ask:
Will the same advisory team continue serving me?
Where will my assets be held?
Will my account number or online access change?
Are my fees changing?
Will any investments need to be sold or replaced?
Are banking or lending services different?
Which entity provides my brokerage services?
Which entity provides investment advice?
Does the team receive compensation for referrals to affiliated businesses?
Will the advisor’s planning process change?
Does the new platform offer services I did not previously have?
What happens if I decide not to follow the advisor?
These questions are more useful than asking whether the advisor is now “more independent.”
The answer to that question can be surprisingly complicated.
The 2025 Recruiting Roundup Looks More Important With 2026 Hindsight
The Hudson River and Narmi moves occurred more than a year ago, but both fit trends that remain visible in 2026.
RBC continued appearing in large advisor recruiting stories, including additional UBS teams. NJ Financial News’ coverage of an $1.1 billion UBS team joining RBC in Michigan shows that the UBS-to-RBC pipeline continued well beyond the Westchester announcements.
LPL has also continued expanding the range of affiliation models available to advisors while its overall platform has grown dramatically. Its current materials still position Linsco as a W-2 structure combining employee support with advisor control over brand, client relationships and growth.
The persistence of both strategies is important.
These were not temporary marketing campaigns created for one recruiting cycle.
RBC continues to compete as a large full-service destination for affluent-client teams.
LPL continues trying to redesign what an employee advisor can look like.
Bottom Line: RBC And Linsco Are Rewriting The Employee-Advisor Choice
The headline in July 2025 was straightforward.
RBC recruited Hudson River Wealth Management from UBS with approximately $1.7 billion in client assets, adding another major team to a new Westchester office already becoming a destination for UBS talent. LPL recruited Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski from Baird with approximately $870 million and brought them into Linsco, where they launched a locally branded practice while remaining W-2 employees.
The firms were both winning employee advisors.
That is where the similarity ends.
Hudson River chose another large institutional employee platform. For a team serving ultra-high-net-worth households, RBC offered a combination of wealth management, banking, credit and institutional infrastructure that allowed the group to change firms without giving up the broader advantages of a full-service organization. The move reinforced RBC’s aggressive push into the high end of U.S. wealth management and helped establish Westchester as a meaningful recruiting market.
The Narmi Group chose something more structurally unusual. Linsco remains an employee channel, but LPL deliberately gives advisors parts of the independent proposition: local brand control, client-relationship ownership, flexibility and centralized support intended to reduce the operating burden.
That matters because Baird itself is hardly a conventional corporate employer. It is privately held, employee-owned and operates one of the country’s substantial private-wealth businesses. Narmi and Rynaski’s departure therefore shows how fine the competitive differences between platforms have become.
The recruiting battle is no longer simply wirehouse versus independent.
It is institutional employment versus entrepreneurial employment versus independent contracting versus supported RIA ownership and several models between them.
For advisors, that creates more choice.
For firms, it makes retention harder because an advisor who wants more autonomy no longer has to make the operational leap into full independence.
For clients, the corporate structure matters less than whether the new platform improves the relationship without creating unnecessary disruption.
RBC’s $1.7 billion UBS win and LPL’s $870 million Baird hire therefore belong in the same story for a reason that has little to do with the combined asset total.
They show that the employee-advisor model is not losing the independence war. It is adapting to it.
Frequently Asked Questions About RBC, UBS And LPL’s Linsco Recruiting Wins
Who Joined RBC From UBS With $1.7 Billion?
Hudson River Wealth Management joined RBC Wealth Management from UBS in July 2025 with approximately $1.7 billion in client assets. The eight-person group included financial advisors Steven Solomon, Lauren Konstantin, Kevin Bertoncin and Roger Matles along with four business and client associates, and the practice joined RBC’s Westchester, New York, office. RBC and InvestmentNews positioned the team around service to ultra-high-net-worth households in the greater New York market, making the hire both a major asset win and part of RBC’s broader effort to expand its presence among sophisticated private-wealth clients.
Why Did Charlie Narmi And Theresa Rynaski Leave Baird For LPL?
LPL said Charlie Narmi and Theresa Rynaski moved from Baird to Linsco because they wanted greater autonomy, flexibility and enhanced technology while retaining the backing of a large financial organization. The pair launched The Narmi Group Investment Management in Omaha with approximately $870 million in advisory, brokerage and retirement plan assets, and Rynaski specifically cited LPL’s investment in integrated technology and the ability to serve clients with greater independence as factors in the decision. The public sources support those stated reasons but do not establish broader dissatisfaction with Baird beyond the team’s own platform preferences.
What Is Linsco By LPL?
Linsco by LPL is LPL Financial’s W-2 employee-advisor channel. LPL describes the model as combining employee status and centralized support with selected elements commonly associated with independence, including the ability to control a local brand, own client relationships and customize how a practice grows. Advisors also receive support from branch management and other LPL resources, making the model particularly relevant for advisors who want more autonomy but do not want to assume every responsibility involved in owning and operating a stand-alone independent business.
Why Was The Hudson River Move Important For RBC’s New York Strategy?
Hudson River Wealth Management joined a recently established RBC office in Westchester at a time when the firm was already recruiting other large UBS teams into the same location. InvestmentNews reported that Centennial Wealth Management Group, with approximately $1.1 billion in assets, had joined the Westchester office shortly beforehand, and both practices remain represented through RBC’s current Westchester-based team pages. That clustering gave RBC billions of dollars in experienced advisor relationships in a strategically important affluent market and created a stronger local base from which the firm could pursue further New York-area recruiting.
What Should Clients Know When Their Advisor Moves To RBC Or Linsco?
Clients should focus on what actually changes in their relationship rather than whether the industry calls the destination an employee or quasi-independent model. They should confirm where assets will be held, whether account access or fees change, which legal entity provides brokerage and advisory services, whether banking or lending relationships are different and whether the advisor team or investment process will change. A locally branded practice such as The Narmi Group still operates through LPL’s regulated infrastructure, while an RBC team may have access to affiliated banking resources that carry separate disclosures, so understanding the legal and service structure is more useful than relying only on the practice name.
Further Reading
InvestmentNews advisor report: The original report on Hudson River Wealth Management leaving UBS for RBC and the Narmi team moving from Baird to LPL’s Linsco channel.
Narmi Group launch: LPL’s announcement detailing the $870 million practice, client base and the team’s stated reasons for choosing Linsco.
Linsco employee model: LPL’s explanation of its W-2 structure, including local brand control, client-relationship ownership and centralized business support.
Hudson River team: RBC’s current team page showing the advisors, associates and multigenerational structure of the former UBS practice.
Baird wealth platform: Baird’s description of its employee-owned Private Wealth Management business and client-service model.
UBS attrition problem: Related NJ Financial News analysis of UBS advisor losses and the tension between U.S. profitability initiatives and advisor retention.
$600 million Linsco move: Related coverage showing how LPL has used Linsco to attract experienced advisors seeking employee support with greater autonomy.
Boenning employee strategy: Related NJ Financial News analysis of LPL using Linsco to combine employee infrastructure with legacy practice identity.
$1.1 billion RBC departure: Related coverage showing that RBC’s recruiting success does not prevent large teams from leaving when another affiliation model fits better.
$1.1 billion UBS team: Related coverage showing that RBC continued recruiting billion-dollar UBS practices after its 2025 Westchester expansion.
