Mercer World Advisors, one of many nation’s largest and most acquisitive registered funding advisors with $69 billion in belongings, has employed Alisa Maute as government managing director and head of shopper improvement, a newly created function. Maute joins from LPL Monetary, the place she most lately served as head of funding product administration and retirement and head of advisor development previous to that.
Within the new function, Maute will lead Mercer’s shopper improvement crew, which has doubled in measurement over the previous two years to greater than 100 professionals. This crew is devoted to figuring out potential purchasers, figuring out whether or not Mercer is an effective match for these households and matching them to the proper advisor inside the agency. Maute has additionally joined Mercer’s government management crew, reporting to President Daniel Gourvitch. Gourvitch stated Mercer’s development from new purchasers, which means belongings or income that new purchasers have added, was up 50% from 2023 to 2024. And that determine is trending greater within the first quarter of 2025.
“Apparently, whereas Mercer has been and continues to be vastly profitable as a partnership of corporations that determined to affix collectively—what folks discuss as M&A—we’re truly at this level including much more households to Mercer and income to Mercer from natural new purchasers than from that very profitable partnership technique,” Gourvitch stated.
Maute stated the agency aspires to serve much more purchasers. To take action, she’ll concentrate on new avenues of development, optimize the processes they’ve in place and ship a greater shopper expertise by means of the advisor matching course of.
The agency’s shopper improvement operate consists of groups that target custodial companions and people centered on the neighborhood and direct channels. Bryan Powers leads the neighborhood and direct shopper improvement groups, whereas Will Mannon leads the custodial companion groups. They may proceed in these roles, reporting to Maute.
Inside these groups, there are regional vice presidents, who do the preliminary work to determine potential purchasers and match them with advisors, Gourvitch stated. They’re organized into groups based mostly on the supply of the shopper. Then, there are of us who assist the onboarding expertise as soon as a shopper decides to affix the agency.
That separation of the advisor from the prospecting operate was one thing that attracted Maute to the agency.
“Over my 25-year profession, I’ve sat throughout from a number of advisors in all totally different channels, and one of many issues that I seen is oftentimes they wrestle once they put on a lot of totally different hats,” she stated. “They’re enterprise improvement; they’re making an attempt to ship nice recommendation; they’re making an attempt to construct portfolios. After I got here throughout Mercer, and I talked to lots of the giant RIAs on the market, I felt that it was such a novel expertise to have that separation between shopper improvement and the monetary advisors delivering recommendation. The truth that these advisors can spend all their time caring for his or her purchasers and doing the proper factor for his or her purchasers with out having to spend time rising their enterprise I discovered actually distinctive. It simply feels prefer it’s a extremely good mannequin for the long run.”
Maute spent the primary 20 years of her profession in asset administration distribution, together with 13 years constructing gross sales groups at WisdomTree. In 2021, LPL tapped her to steer its natural development efforts and oversee the consulting groups that assist them ship providers to their purchasers.
Mercer has made quite a lot of key management modifications within the final 12 months.
Final February, the agency introduced on Gün Keresteci as chief monetary officer. He joined from McKinsey & Firm, the place he was world head of finance.
In September, the RIA employed Elizabeth Hioe, one other former McKinsey government, as its new chief folks officer.
And in October, Dave Barton, vice chairman of M&A at Mercer Advisors, retired from his function to pay attention his power on an ongoing well being concern, the corporate stated. Martine Lellis, the agency’s former chief expertise officer till she was promoted to principal of M&A companion improvement in Could, has taken on Barton’s function.
