RayJay’s Alex. Brown Hires UBS Broker in Miami, Wells Veteran Goes Independent

Raymond James Financial has bolstered the slowly growing high-net-worth client business it acquired from Deutsche Bank in 2016 with two Miami-based advisors hired from UBS Wealth Management USA.

Enrique Triana moved to RayJay’s Alex. Brown division last month, after eight-and-a-half years at UBS, where he had spent his entire brokerage career. Triana was managing $110 million for business owners, entrepreneurs, landowners, independent professionals, corporate executives and corporations, the firm said in a news release.

Raymond James retained more than 90% of the more than 200 brokers who were working at Deutsche Bank before it abandoned its U.S. wealth business. Subsequent growth in the division has been slow relative to recruiting into RayJay’s traditional and independent brokerage channels.  The St. Petersburg, Fla.-based company, which reorganized Alex. Brown’s sales management hierarchy two years ago, added 286 advisors net to its ranks in the past 12 months.

Triana’s arrival from UBS follows that of Ricardo Kassin, another Miami broker who joined the same Raymond James branch on Brickell Avenue in December.  Kassin had worked with $397 million in client assets at UBS, according to Raymond James.

“We continue to see interest from high-caliber client advisors like Enrique and Ricardo, who are looking for a firm with that unique combination of a boutique-feel and sophisticated service,” Haig Ariyan, the former Deutsche Bank wealth leader who is now president of Alex. Brown, said in a prepared statement.

Triana, who worked at Banco Santander International, Bank of Boston, and Citibank before joining UBS, did not respond to a request for comment on his move.

UBS, which has experienced relatively high broker attrition despite pulling out of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting in 2018. As of March 31, it had 6,496 brokers in the Americas, down 4% from 12 months earlier.

It also has been selectively hiring high-producing advisors in the U.S. Justin Low, who was producing $1.4 million at a Morgan Stanley branch in Phoenix, joined UBS last week.

Separately, Timothy J. O’Connor, a Wells Fargo Advisors senior vice president who was managing $143 million in client assets, left the wirehouse three weeks ago to become an independent broker with Ameriprise Financial.

O’Connor, who is based in Huntley, Illinois, spent 26 years of his brokerage career with wirehouses—joining Merrill Lynch in 1994, Morgan Stanley in 2000 and Wells Fargo in 2005, according to his BrokerCheck history. He began his career in 1987, however, with American Express Financial Advisors, a predecessor firm to Ameriprise.