Envestnet seeks a chief product officer; UBS hands Naureen Hassan its US wealth unit

Envestnet is recruiting a chief product officer, RIABiz reported, to take over a large subset of the brief Molly Weiss held before what the publication calls her planned departure. RIABiz describes Weiss as understated but key, one of the last people who knew where the firm's start-up 'skeleton bones' were buried — institutional memory, not a title. The scale behind the seat explains why the refill counts: Envestnet has crossed $2.7 trillion in RIA assets and marked that milestone by adding an executive position dedicated to expanding wallet share among existing wealth clients, many of them Tamarac software users. The Berwyn, Pa., firm built its franchise selling to more than 100,000 independent broker-dealer representatives; RIAs now account for near 42% of platform assets, and RIABiz separately puts the enterprise's total assets under administration at $5.3 trillion.

Peer platforms have been arguing the same case through deals: Orion has been wrapping BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard models inside its tax technology, and RIABiz reported AssetMark edging closer to swallowing Adhesion, both moves that pull the product decision toward the platform. The Tamarac users are the hinge in that story, because the RIA push puts a large share of Envestnet's growth with advisors who buy software and portfolio tools as one decision; the new RIA executive after the $2.7-trillion mark reads as a wager that the channel keeps gaining share of revenue, and the product seat is where those two commitments have to be reconciled.

Weiss's departure is one line in a longer executive-suite rewrite, alongside a new chief financial officer — a Bain Capital protégé in RIABiz's description who replaces Josh Warren, the CFO of the take-private — and a new chief technology officer. Michael Kim now heads the RIA TAMP and, in RIABiz's phrase, counts as a two-TAMP chief executive. Bill Crager, the co-founder, has given up the CEO role, a decision the company said was his, according to RIABiz, which reported that questions about the Yodlee unit and the firm's direction were left open. Crager has not left the market: he is building software that connects the tools needed to manage alternative assets, an effort RIABiz called a bid to 'Envestnet-ize' alts, backed by WestCap and Laurence Tosi.

This publication has argued that wealth-management consolidation has become a financing and integration event, with buyers paying for post-close operators and deal cadence. Finance and engineering seats have turned over in RIABiz's account; product is where the client-facing roadmap gets decided.

UBS is betting its wealth future on Naureen Hassan, a former Schwab executive whom RIABiz calls a corporate digital A-lister, and analysts cited in that account give her what the publication describes as a fighting chance of transcending PaineWebber's ossified culture. What she inherits is a US wirehouse of 6,000 brokers and $2 billion of cash flow, a ratio near $333,000 per broker, which RIABiz characterizes as milking aging broker relationships with aging investors and as needing a new kind of human presence, empathy, mindset and smarts to draw in Generation Z.

Set beside the Envestnet search, the UBS hire points at the same thing the custody handoff does: the executive market is paying for control of products and channels, where the fight has moved up into the platform layer and the software that carries models and the workflow that moves accounts are the assets in contention. The RIABiz roundup that carried the UBS news also carried NewEdge's decision to install a 17-year Morgan Stanley executive as chief executive; the publication notes the executive had spent seven years at the Mark Zuckerberg RIA and that the $80-billion all-channel RIA made the hire to show seriousness about technology. RIABiz has also counted seven RIA chief executives stepping aside for 'operators' as private-equity backers turn 'trigger' happy in an adverse market.

Alternatives supply the other current in the hiring market. RIABiz reported that Vanguard hired Bill Stout, 11 years at Nuveen, into an alternatives role, at an index manager preparing to split $10.4 trillion in funds between two distinct management teams.

The coverage does not say who is in contention for the Envestnet seat or whether the firm will promote from inside, and it attaches no figure to what UBS expects Hassan's tenure to produce. What both seats come with is a base that has to change: a platform whose RIA assets now sit near 42% of the total, and a wirehouse RIABiz says grew old along with the advisors who built it.