Raymond James adds 70 bank advisors and $18.7B through Pinnacle

Raymond James will add about 70 bank-based advisors overseeing roughly $18.7 billion as Synovus Securities advisors move into Pinnacle Asset Management, according to Nov. 12 reports in InvestmentNews, WealthManagement.com and Financial Advisor Magazine.

The advisors serve clients across the combined bank's 10-state footprint, mainly in the Southeast, and are expected to finish moving by May 2027. The transfer follows Pinnacle Financial Partners' January 2026 combination with Synovus Financial. Pinnacle's investment program already ran through Raymond James. The new advisors come in through its Financial Institutions Division for bank and credit union programs.

For the bank-based advisors, the platform changes but the client relationships stay, Pinnacle said. Clients keep their advisors and gain access to Raymond James' investment and wealth services, and the advisors work from a common platform. A Pinnacle spokesperson said the broker-dealer reps are co-employees of Raymond James and Pinnacle. Stephen Kruchten, president of the division, called it "a significant and highly strategic expansion" of the Pinnacle relationship. Wayne Akins, Pinnacle's head of wealth management, said it gives the combined firm a consistent foundation for wealth management.

The $18.7 billion across about 70 advisors works out to roughly $270 million per advisor, compared with about $240 million each for the two UBS advisors joining LPL Strategic Wealth. A bank-program transfer like Synovus is a single contract decision covering about 70 advisors. As Private Wealth Daily previously reported, Raymond James also added a four-advisor team from PNC Private Bank.

Pinnacle Asset Management added a Truist team overseeing roughly $700 million in Southwest Florida in October, according to WealthManagement.com. First Tech Federal Credit Union, after merging with Digital Federal Credit Union, will move five advisors from Digital Investment Services, which manages about $750 million and was previously affiliated with LPL, into First Tech's Addison Avenue Investment Services. Raymond James runs Addison Avenue, which oversees about $6.8 billion, InvestmentNews reported.

Brett Mower and Timothy Gallagher left UBS to launch LegacyCoast Private Wealth in Haddonfield, N.J., InvestmentNews reported. The pair are affiliating with LPL Strategic Wealth, LPL's supported-independence model. The pair reported about $480 million in client assets. Financial terms were not disclosed. The Synovus program alone is about 39 times that size.