The largest (and quite possibly most significant) advisor breakaway in industry history made news this week. Yet instead of leading with the scale or significance of the move, headlines centered on Merrill’s lawsuit alleging corporate raiding.
The legal action is real, but it risks obscuring the more important narrative: a $129 billion team leaving to form OpenArc Corporate Advisory, a firm that may redefine what’s possible in the independent space.
For years, conventional wisdom held that only small or mid-sized teams with plain-vanilla practices could realistically choose independence. Large wirehouse practices, it was thought, were too complex, too reliant on institutional infrastructure, and too deeply entwined with their firms’ platforms to ever leave. This transition renders that notion obsolete. No team is too big to reimagine its future outside the wirehouse walls.
Of course, the path isn’t easy, and it doesn’t mean that every big team is right to leave. Massive enterprises bring with them operational hurdles, dozens of stakeholders, multifaceted client needs, and layers of complexity. But OpenArc’s launch demonstrates that access to products, technology, safe asset custody, and support is no longer monopolized by the big firms. No doubt, the way advisors access these items is different, but the “best of the best” is no longer exclusive to one institution or model.
The modern wealth management ecosystem – anchored in this case by Dynasty and Schwab – provides scale, sophistication, and institutional-grade resources rivaling anything within a wirehouse.
The implications are immense: When a team of this stature elects to enter the independent space (or transitions to any non-wirehouse firm), it validates the models at the very top of the profession. If advisors who oversee billions for multi-national corporations, C-suite executives, and ultra-high-net-worth families believe independence is not only viable but preferable, the narrative shifts for everyone else. The ceiling on what is possible outside the wirehouses has been lifted.
It also underscores how wirehouse teams have evolved into businesses in their own right. The largest groups now operate less like individual practices and more like full-scale financial services companies, complete with leadership hierarchies, investment committees, and specialized client teams. These enterprises already mirror the multi-family offices and institutional consulting firms that thrive in the independent channel. OpenArc’s move could inspire other wirehouse “enterprises” to ask what might be possible if they, too, seized full control of their destiny.
The client perspective is equally telling. Today’s most sophisticated investors demand flexibility and customization—whether that means access to alternatives, tailored lending solutions, or family governance services. Independence equips advisors with a broader toolkit, free from the confines of a single firm’s product shelf. The rise of moves like OpenArc’s affirms a larger truth: client choice wins. And the more that investors demand bespoke solutions, the more advisors will gravitate toward platforms that empower them to deliver.
This is not, however, an obituary for the wirehouses. As I’ve written before, firms like Merrill, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Wells Fargo Advisors remain dominant in many respects. They are still home to some of the industry’s most productive advisors, supported by vast resources and global brands. Yet the competitive dynamic is no longer one-sided. The independent model has closed the gap and, in cases like this, proven itself not just competitive but compelling—even for the industry’s largest enterprises.
For me, the moment is also deeply personal. OpenArc’s leaders – Erik Bjerke, Jeff Crowell, Jim Kaufman, and their colleagues – placed their trust in Mindy Diamond, in me, and in our firm, Diamond Consultants, to help guide their decision. That process spanned more than a decade of dialogue and collaboration. To have been part of their journey is humbling. But what excites me most is what their decision represents for the broader advisor community.
The lawsuit will play out as they always do. But if that is where the narrative ends, then the most important lesson will have been overlooked. The real story is about possibility. A team of unprecedented size and complexity weighed the options, surveyed the landscape, and concluded that independence offered the best path forward. That reality should change how every advisor – whether managing $100 million or $100 billion – thinks about their own future.
This is not simply the story of a legal dispute or a single firm’s loss. It is the story of an industry evolving before our eyes.
