New York, NY Office

Stephens is a multi-team investment adviser with roughly 243 advisors and about $18 billion in assets under management that serves individuals (including high-net-worth clients), retirement plans, foundations, corporations and other institutional clients. In addition to advisory services and financial planning, the firm provides brokerage, investment banking, custody and wrap program platforms and publishes research and client communications produced by its Equity Research group.

The firm offers both discretionary and non-discretionary management across a wide suite of wrap and advisory programs (for example, PWM, SAS, MAP, UMA, SMID and fixed-income strategies) and uses investment committees and IARs to select funds, sub-advisors and model portfolios. Stephens combines bottom-up equity research (covering roughly 400 stocks) with committee-driven asset-allocation and fixed-income duration management, and it also advises on private equity and alternative investments when appropriate.

Compared with many peers, Stephens operates as a dually registered broker-dealer and investment bank and also provides municipal advisory services and sponsors pension and health trust programs for local governments, activities that are uncommon among multi-team advisers. The firm discloses a number of atypical features — including the ability to receive commissions in certain brokerage contexts, revenue-sharing and clearing arrangements with Pershing, an insured bank sweep program administered with IntraFi, availability of performance-based fee arrangements in qualifying cases, relationships with bank and insurance clients, and a prior SEC cease-and-desist order related to mutual fund share-class selection.