New Custody, Clearing Firm Launches With Ex-Hightower Exec at Helm
Catherine “Cat” Davies, previously Hightower chief solutions officer, was picked to lead Innovayte.
Financial services industry veteran Catherine “Cat” Davies has been named CEO of Innovayte, a new custody and clearing company supporting independent registered investment advisors and broker-dealers by providing forward-looking solutions to help them serve their clients and grow their businesses.
The companies Equity Advisor Solutions and ETC Brokerage came together under new leadership to form the new company.
Davies has more than 25 years of financial services leadership experience and most recently was at Hightower for over four years, most recently as chief solutions officer for the past 2.5 years, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Before Hightower, she was a vice president at Fidelity Investments for nearly five years.
Prior to that, she served two different stints Charles Schwab, first as key account manager and investment specialist for Schwab Advisor Services from 1998 to 2005 and later, from 2008-2014, as Schwab senior relationship manager. In between, she was director of marketing and business development at RGT Wealth Advisors for three years.
“Over the past 18 months, we have embarked on an ambitious journey to reimagine how we serve the RIA and independent broker community,” Jeffrey A. Desich, chairman of Innovayte and executive vice chairman of Equity Trust Co., said in a news release.
“With the launch of Innovayte, we have a better way to support entrepreneurs, focusing on business outcomes, not asset size,” he said. “We will be inviting a select number of advisors whose practices have long been overlooked by the big firms and deserve a greater deal of attention from their partners.”
In 1974, Richard Desich launched a brokerage firm that eventually became Equity Trust Co., an independent trust company. Almost 40 years later, the Desich family formed Equity Advisor Solutions to further serve the financial services industry.
“With the forthcoming addition of self-clearing capabilities and other offerings, the team decided to form a new company to bring all the pieces together, meet the changing needs of the fast-growing industry and match its advisors’ entrepreneurial spirit,” the company explained.
Pictured: Cat Davies, CEO of Innovayte.