Wells Fargo FiNet Firm Adds $1B Team in Palm Beach

Wells Fargo FiNet Firm Adds $1B Team in Palm Beach Wells Fargo gets another win for its FiNet channel even as it continues to speak with RIAs about a new fee-only RIA channel slated to come next year. Merritt Point Wealth Advisors, an Old Greenwich, Conn.-based independent wealth management practice affiliated with Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, added a seven-person advisory team from Truist Wealth Management that oversees more than $1 billion in client assets, the firms announced. The Palm Beach, Fla.-based team includes partners Mark Elliot, Scott Friedman, Darren Dawson and John Kent, all executive managing directors, along with Vice President John Henry Kent, Operations Manager Kimberly Benko and Senior Associate Jose Mercy. The advisors had been with Truist for about a decade, according to BrokerCheck. “The combination of strategic vision, collaborative culture, operational sophistication, and long-term investment in advisors and their teams made this the clear fit for us and for our clients,” said Friedman, executive managing director and partner. The addition expands Merritt Point’s presence in South Florida and brings the practice’s total locations to seven across Connecticut, New York, Texas and Florida. The firm joined FiNet in January 2019. Wells Fargo has continued to add advisors to its FiNet and employee channels this year, including a $1.7 billion team that recently moved from RBC Capital Markets. In the meantime, the wirehouse is continuing to gather advisor feedback on a fee-only RIA channel it is opening at the end of this year, according to Erik Karanik, Wells Fargo’s head of wealth and investment management independent solutions. The channel already has Wells advisors teed up to join it at the end of this year, but Karanik said his team is also out in the RIA market gathering feedback and ideas at conferences and one-on-one meetings. “We really want to make sure that we have something that is extremely viable when we go to external, so right now we’re making people aware of the platform,” he said. “We are trying to show people that we’re going to have a platform that really gives the best of both worlds: a really good technology stack and the ability for them to integrate any third-party technology that they want, [as well as] all the services that Wells Fargo can offer for client solutions.” Karanik said the meetings are a combination of Wells Fargo demonstrating its web-based tools and technology and gathering feedback to adjust the design and user experience. Wells Fargo, like other wirehouse and bank wealth management firms, is working against the steady shift of breakaways to the RIA sector. According to recent tracking by ISS Market Intelligence, the RIA channel had the most net advisor gains in 2025. Karanik added that the San Francisco-based wirehouse has seen some positive knock-on results from its RIA outreach in recruiting to its existing FiNet and advisor channels. “It’s definitely leading to the activity that we’re seeing around, just general overall recruiting, and whether recruiting into the employee channel or new affiliations, and knowing that we’ve embraced the optionality for the advisor to deliver the client experience that they want to and be able to support them through that evolution of their practice,” he said.