Kestra puts a product executive in charge of wealth management

Kestra Financial has hired Kelly Apple to run its wealth management business. Apple spent 13 years at BlackRock, and her new title puts her in charge of investment, planning and advisory operations. President John Amore had held the job; he spent more than a year looking for a successor. He described it as an executive committee role and said he loved doing the work himself, which made the choice matter.

WealthManagement.com first reported the hire. Apple's mandate covers investment management, high-net-worth and advanced planning, advisory solutions, retirement, insurance, alternative investments and due diligence. That scope applies to both Kestra's main advisor business and its breakaway channel, Kestra Private Wealth Services.

Her career is distribution. At BlackRock she was managing director and head of national accounts, leading the team that managed the firm's largest broker-dealer partnerships. Earlier she held senior intermediary-distribution roles at DWS Investments and Van Kampen Investments. Amore stressed the products and solutions advisors use, the territory she has worked her whole career.

For Kestra-affiliated advisors, this appointment says where home-office resources are heading. A leader built around products and partnerships, not practice management, will likely concentrate investment on the platform's menu: models, alternatives, planning tools, and the due diligence behind them. Because the role explicitly extends to the breakaway channel, Kestra appears to want the same product depth to be the selling point for advisors weighing independence.

Kestra Holdings, which includes the RIA Bluespring Wealth Partners, is majority-owned by Stone Point Capital with Oak Hill Capital as a minority investor. Apple said the firm's advisor-centric culture drew her to the job. The hire says something about Kestra as well: it has bet that an advisor-centric platform is a deeper product lineup, and it has put a career product executive in charge of delivering it. The test is whether advisors need to look elsewhere.