Commonwealth Financial Network on Wednesday announced it recruited Middleton, Wisconsin-based Sentinel Advisory Group, formerly with Northwest Mutual, to join its network of independent financial advisors.
With more than $300 million in client assets, Sentinel’s nine staff members include six advisors, led by Co-Founders Brent Cashore, Peter Shulla and Nathan Keeling, according to its website.
In 2023, Commonwealth onboarded 292 advisors to new and existing practices, bringing on $15.9 billion in client assets, a nearly 42% increase to 2022, marking another year of record recruiting for the firm, it said early this year.
Commonwealth partnered with about 2,200 independent financial advisors overseeing more than $296 billion in assets nationwide as of Dec. 31, it said.
“We have high expectations of a firm partner, and we had an extensive list of priorities to ensure we wouldn’t settle,” according to Shulla.
“Of all seven of the potential partner firms we explored, only Commonwealth checked every box,” Shulla said. “We needed unified technology systems that could both ease how we do business now and enable us to extend our range of services over time while leveling up our client experience.”
Calling Commonwealth an “adaptive” firm with a “track record of working with teams like ours wanting more control over their destiny,” Cashore said: “Onsite training support during our transition and the ability to choose our planning software enabled a smooth transition process where we felt heard and supported.”
Cashore added: “Now, we can evolve faster with the breadth of tools available to us. We can also develop our next generation of advisors and pursue an aggressive growth path for our practice.”
The Sentinel team “recognized a natural fit between their core values and the Commonwealth culture, and we’re honored that when they were ready to make a change, they trusted us with their business,” said Becca Hajjar, Managing Principal and Chief Business Development Officer at Commonwealth.
“By leveraging Commonwealth’s platform and our flexible model, this entrepreneurial team can start building for the future and can prioritize focusing on their clients’ goals while operating at their highest capacity,” she added.
Jeff Berman, Contributing Editor & Reporter at Wealth Solutions Report, can be reached at jberman@wealthsolutionsreport.com.
