Another Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Team Jumps Ship to a Boston-based RIA

The Risk Paradigm Group is a Boston-based Registered Investment Advisor, (RIA), made up of wealth management teams, primarily from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and UBS.

The latest additions are three members of a Morgan Stanley Wealth Management team known as the Tower Group, The team includes Travis Tucker, a Certified Portfolio Manager, Don Brusca, a Fixed Income Portfolio Manager, and Stacy Bazylinski.

Morgan Stanley has seen its share of defections lately, many over its new 3D technology platform. A good portion of those defections have been legacy Smith Barney financial advisors who were brought in by the merger with Morgan Stanley.

The feeling among them was that the new Morgan Stanley technology was simply not as good as what they were used to at Smith Barney.

"That's true," said Risk Paradigm founder and CEO, David Gatti, who was at Smith Barney when it merged with Morgan Stanley. "The team that just joined us was a legacy Smith Barney team and they'll tell you that the transition to the new technology platform wasn't ideal for their business. I think any legacy Smith Barney guy is going to feel that."

As for Risk Paradigm's technology solutions, it uses Dynasty Financial Partners. "Dynasty's technology is state of the art," says Gatti. "There are no legacy technology issues because we're really building it from scratch. Dynasty helps you pull all of the aspects together and deliver it one platform."

Gatti said he had been at Smith Barney and then Morgan Stanley in one capacity or another since 1989. He started Risk Paradigm in 2011.

"I was looking to deliver solutions as a client of the street and as a fiduciary," said Gatti. "and about two -thirds of the way through the research process I bumped into my friends at Dynasty. It was a comfortable and cultural fit and very much in line with what we wanted to deliver.Basically, Dynasty provides the technology, custodial and research support Gatti used to get from Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney.

"The difference is that they do it in on an independent and objective basis," adds Gatti.

Tucker said he and his team chose to go independent with Risk Paradigm in part because of their former connection with Gatti, whom they knew during their Smith Barney days.

Actually, Tucker's relationship with Gatti goes back even further than that. They played college hockey together at the University of Massachusetts.