30+ Year Industry Veteran Chris Radford Joins AE Wealth as President

TOPEKA, Kan., Feb. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AE Wealth Management announces that Chris Radford has joined the firm as President. Co-Founder David Callanan will continue in his role as Chief Executive Officer. The addition of Mr. Radford to the management team, and the launch of the new InvestmentHQ mobile app for helping advisors strengthen engagement with clients, are part of AE Wealth's ongoing strategy for growing its platform.

"Chris shares our commitment to empowering entrepreneurial, growth-minded advisors with the tools and education they need to expand their practices and help clients achieve their financial goals," said David Callanan, Co-Founder and CEO of AE Wealth Management. "His extensive financial services background will greatly assist our team in enabling our advisors to reach new heights of growth, efficiency, and profitability?and, simultaneously, increase the size of our network, and depth and breadth of our suite of services."   

AE Wealth Management has experienced impressive growth, having increased its total platform assets by about 500 percent?from over $590 million at year-end 2016 to approximately $3 billion as of December 31, 2017?without accepting external capital or making acquisitions. For more information about the benefits of partnering with AE Wealth Management, visit http://www.aewealthmanagement.com.

To facilitate further growth this year, AE Wealth has rolled out a new mobile app, InvestmentHQ, which provides clients with a view of all their investments on a single screen from any smartphone. The InvestmentHQ dashboard offers clients a snapshot of position, transaction, and account data from their investment portfolios as well as indexed annuities from 10 top insurance carriers. InvestmentHQ can be downloaded in the App Store or Google Play.

The InvestmentHQ app's features include:

• Secure Account Access: Investors can securely view all current account positions, values, performance, and activity at any time and from any location.
• Balance Sheets: InvestmentHQ's balance sheets consolidate all of an investor's accounts in one place, and help them track their account performance against their retirement-saving goals.
• Push Notifications: Advisors can communicate with their clients using InvestmentHQ when they are not available in the office. The app's push notifications enable investors to receive updates with their portfolio balance, performance, required minimum distributions, and advisor contact details on their smartphones.
• Reporting on the Go: Investors can view statements and create ad-hoc reports offering insights into their investment performance.
• Custom Commentary: InvestmentHQ provides investors with access to personalized commentary from their advisor.
• Advisor Contacts: The "My Advisor" tool in InvestmentHQ allows investors to click on their advisor's phone number to call them, or click a map button for directions to the advisor's office before a scheduled meeting.

"When advisors and their clients communicate frequently and meaningfully, both parties benefit tremendously," said Chris Radford, President of AE Wealth Management. "InvestmentHQ is the latest innovation that we offer advisors to streamline and improve their practice operations and client engagement. I am proud to join the AE Wealth Management family, and I look forward to working closely with the independent advisors all over the nation who have partnered with us to grow their clients' assets as well as their own assets under management."

Mr. Radford possesses more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining AE Wealth Management, he served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Calton & Associates, Inc., a full-service broker-dealer and investment advisory firm. Mr. Radford was previously President and CEO of Palomar Financial Services, an independent RIA headquartered in southern California, and VSR Financial Services, a broker-dealer based in Overland Park, Kan. He entered the independent advisory market as National Sales Manager for AIG SunAmerica Securities. Mr. Radford also held leadership positions at Union Bank and PNC Investments, and began his career as a financial advisor at GNA Securities and HomeFed Bank in San Diego.

Blair Lewis, President of Hurst, Texas-based GRN Mid-Cities (http://www.grnmid-cities.com), an executive search firm focused on the asset management, insurance, and RIA industries, connected Mr. Radford with AE Wealth.

About AE Wealth Management

AE Wealth Management is one of the fastest-growing registered investment advisory (RIA) firms in America, offering an open-architecture platform of investment solutions and practice management resources that independent financial advisors can use to help their clients work towards their financial goals. Advisors can demonstrate greater value for clients and grow their practices by utilizing the cutting-edge technology?and the broad array of investment strategies and asset classes from consistently vetted and monitored money managers?on AE Wealth Management's platform. The insights and tools from AE Wealth Management enable advisors to obtain a holistic view of each client's financial universe in one place.

AE Wealth Management oversees approximately $3 billion in total platform assets, including $2.4 billion in assets under management, as of December 31, 2017. For more information, please visit www.aewealthmanagement.com.

Media Contact:  
Dana Taormina 
JConnelly 
(973) 850-7305 
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SOURCE AE Wealth Management