Dynasty’s move makes St. Pete ‘center of gravity’ for financial services

Dynasty Financial Partners had plenty of reasons to celebrate Thursday.

Dynasty, which provides wealth management and technology platforms for independent financial advisory firms, moved into its new St. Petersburg headquarters this week. The company, previously headquartered in New York, just moved into about 12,400 square feet – the entire 15th floor – at 200 Central.

Additionally, Dynasty just hit $40 billion in assets, making it the largest independent wealth management firm in the country, said Shirl Penney, co-founder and CEO, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new headquarters.

“Yesterday, asset flow data came out in the industry, in wealth management,” Penney said. “The No. 1 employee asset flow firm, employee advisor firm in America, was Raymond James. Congratulations to Raymond James. And the No. 1 independent wealth management firm, asset flows in the industry for the first half of the year, was Dynasty.”

Both Raymond James (NYSE: RJF), a financial services giant with headquarters at Carillon Office Park, and Dynasty were net asset positive by $11 billion in the first half of the year, Penney said.

“So as of this moment, St. Pete has the 2 top asset-flowing wealth management firms in America,” Penney said.

The move also bolsters the area’s strength in the financial services sector, Chris Steinocher, president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, said during the ribbon cutting.

“Did you know that in a 25-mile radius of this building, there are more people in financial services occupations than in Charlotte, North Carolina,” Steinocher said, referring to the corporate headquarters for Bank of America and Wells Fargo’s east coast division. “So today is the day is the day we declare ourselves the center of that gravity.”

Dynasty’s move to St. Petersburg from New York was a coup for local economic development officials. The company has a cloud-based platform, so it can operate from anywhere. It looked at moving to eight cities before choosing St. Pete. Several factors influenced the move, but the largest one was community support, Penney said.

Dynasty is maintaining a New York office, but more than a dozen of its employees already have moved to St. Pete, with others expected by the end of the year. In addition, the company has been hiring locally, bringing on 11 new partners. All of them are women, Penney said.

“Dynasty is now 45 percent women in terms of the employees, in an industry that’s less than 20 percent female. I’m so excited to be in a community that embraces the value of diversity the way we do as a company,” he said.