Veteran leader Desiree Sii departs Osaic

Desiree Sii, former CEO and president of Osaic Services Inc.

'Does Osaic really need these redundancies in management,' asked one industry executive.

A veteran leader of Osaic, Desiree Sii, has left the giant broker-dealer network after more than 20 years.

Most recently the CEO and president of Osaic Services Inc., which until recently was SagePoint Financial Inc., Sii announced her departure over the weekend on LinkedIn, stating: “On to the next chapter of my career. Thank you so much to everyone on the team! Warms my heart!”

Sii became head of SagePoint in February 2021, taking over for industry veteran Jeff Auld, who retired. She had been at various Osaic controlled firms 2003, with a few months at Charles Schwab in 2014 and 2015.

Over that time, Osaic was known as AIG Advisor Group and owned by the giant insurer American International Group Inc., which sold the network in 2016 to private equity manager Lightyear Capital and was renamed Advisor Group. Another private equity investor, Reverence Capital, bought it in 2019 and last year renamed it, again, this time Osaic.

It’s not clear why Sii left Osaic. She did not respond to a request to comment on LinkedIn, and a company spokesperson did not comment when asked for reasons she had moved on.

Osaic is a giant network of 11,600 financial advisors, a third of whom are women, with $635 billion in assets, according to the company’s website. Since it changed its name, the company has also been consolidating the operations of its various broker-dealers, a way to curb costs as the company marches to an widely anticipated initial public offering.

Greg Cornick, president of advice and wealth management, is now also CEO of two of the rebranded broker-dealers, Osaic Wealth Inc. and Osaic Services, where Sii had been chief executive. Another CEO of an Osaic firm, Jim Nagengast, in January said he was leaving Securities America Inc., where he had worked for almost 30 years.

“This makes sense,” said a senior industry source, who spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews about Sii’s departure. “Does Osaic really need these redundancies in management as it moves to one broker-dealer?”

“Sii did leave as part of the consolidation,” said another senior industry source, who also spoke confidentially to InvestmentNews. “I don’t know if she’s landed anywhere else. It’s part of general push for various different firm leaders to find a job elsewhere in the organization or leave.”

Osaic this month said it completed its deal to acquire Lincoln Financial Advisors Corporation and Lincoln Financial Securities Corporation from Lincoln National Corporation.

The deal adds significant scale to Osaic as it takes in roughly 1,400 advisors overseeing $115 billion in assets, which is more than the initial $108 billion AUM estimated when the transaction was first announced in December.