Goldman Sachs PFM Sheds Individual Clients The former United Capital has lost about 8% of its individual clients even as it gained in the HNW segment and overall AUM.
Regulatory filings for Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management (PFM), as United Capital was renamed after it was acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2019, shows that the firm lost individual clients from 2020 to 2021, even as it gained some HNW and institutional clients and its overall AUM grew, according to the firm s most recent regulatory filings.
The firm’s Form ADV filed at the end of March showed that the number of individual clients managed by the firm dropped some 8%, from 14,940 in December 2020 to 13,715 by this spring. Assets managed across individual client accounts fell 5%, from $5.27 billion to $4.99 billion.
Goldman Sachs’ Personal Financial Management business fills unmet gaps among Ayco’s corporate client employees.
Goldman Sachs recently brought Ayco, which provides corporate-sponsored workplace financial planning, and Personal Financial Management, its rebranded United Capital business, under one corporate umbrella called the Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management Group, co-headed by Joe Duran and Larry Restieri. Duran, head of Personal Financial Management, said the integration has brought synergies benefiting both, with the financial advisors in his group signing on over a dozen corporate programs since joining Goldman.
On its fourth quarter earnings call, Goldman CEO David Solomon said there had been over 4,000 bilateral referrals, representing over $7 billion of assets under supervision, across the firm’s private wealth management group, Personal Financial Management and Ayco in 2020.
Goldman’s Robo Will Be Retrofitted for Its Advisors Goldman is currently working on a version of Marcus Invest that takes an advisor relationship into account, said Joe Duran, head of Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.
Goldman Sachs launched its new automated investment advice platform, Marcus Invest, this week, for clients with as little as $1,000. But the firm is working on a version for its in-house advisors, said Joe Duran, head of Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.
Of course, the unit’s 400 advisors can refer clients to Marcus Invest today, but they don’t get the personalization and human touch within the robo application. And the advisor currently doesn’t have visibility into the platform.
Universe Apart
Folksy and earnest, Duran, 53, is a unique emissary for the investment bank. His Horatio Alger-esque background something the company likes to highlight is a universe apart from the typical resume of a Goldman managing director.
After a hardscrabble upbringing in what he describes as a broken family, Duran arrived in the U.S. at 19 with $200 to his name. He went on to found and sell first an investment firm and then United, which he was estimated to own about 10% of at the time of the sale. Duran declined to comment on his stake.
The author of three financial self-help books (including “Start It, Sell It & Make a Mint”), Duran is accustomed to addressing the masses. Selling to Goldman was a logical way to scale up United and apply the bank’s wealth-advisory approach to a vastly bigger audience, he said.
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