Just a week after wrapping its annual INSITE conference in Nashville, BNY Pershing has laid off its business consulting team and about half a dozen people in its product group, sources said. The business consulting team was responsible for helping the company’s RIA custody and clearing clients grow their businesses, while the product team brings advisors products related to cash management, lending, retirement, finance, client portals and 529 plans. That team also consults with advisors on those products.
“We regularly review our operating model to make sure we’re set up with the right mix of skills and talent to best serve our clients,” a BNY spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to actively hire.”
The firm has also updated its brand to use BNY Pershing as the moniker, the spokesperson said. That largely reflects the larger firm’s strategy to tighten integrations between the clearing and custody unit, the asset management division and the 240-year-old bank.
The business consulting team consisted of about six to seven people, sources said, including Julie Ann D’Antuono Small, a senior vice president of business consulting who had been with Pershing since March 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, she founded and lead a consulting practice to support early-stage startups. She was at Fidelity for 16 years before that, serving as a vice president of business development and consulting before she left.
The layoffs also affected Jeff Ramsey, who had been a business consultant at Pershing since May 2022, according to LinkedIn. Previously, he was the chief operating officer and chief compliance officer at HFS Wealth Management.
Andrew Hirschler, a senior practice management consultant at Pershing, was also laid off. He joined Pershing in July 2015 and previously served as director and head of advisory and financial markets education at UBS Wealth Management.
Small, Ramsey and Hirschler did not return requests for comment prior to publication.
Pershing’s business consulting team was most recently led by Janet Kelly, who retired in March after 11 years at the company, according to her LinkedIn page. She succeeded William Bruckner, who served as head of consulting and implementation, wealth solutions. He was laid off last September.
Before Bruckner, Lisa Crafford served as head of business consulting. She and Director of Technology Consulting Morgan McGovern left last June and joined Karl Heckenberg’s new wealth management-focused capital investment firm, Constellation Wealth Capital, at the end of last year.
Last week, Pershing X introduced several upgrades to its multi-custodial wealth management platform, Wove. Wove was first revealed at last year’s INSITE Conference and had been under development since Pershing X was created in late 2021.
Tim Welsh, president, CEO and founder of Nexus Strategy, said it appears the firm's Wove strategy is running behind in development and, given the costs of development, eating up the firm's resources.
“It is the biggest anchor of all time—Wove—around Pershing’s neck,” he said. “They had to take all hands on deck to bring Wove to market, and it’s still not there yet.”
"This affects a small portion of our population and is not connected to Wove," said a BNY spokesperson.
