A team of former UBS private wealth advisors has launched Beacon Coast Partners, an independent, employee-owned registered investment advisor based in San Francisco. The firm oversees approximately $3.5 billion in client assets and targets ultra-high-net-worth individuals who are approaching or have recently completed significant liquidity events, such as the sale of a business or an initial public offering.
The firm is led by founding managing partners Michael Evans and David Jasper, each with roughly three decades of industry experience, according to their FINRA BrokerCheck records. Beacon Coast serves founders, executives, and early employees whose wealth is concentrated in a single company. The firm engages clients before a transaction closes, when tax, estate, and portfolio decisions carry the greatest long-term impact.
“That transition introduces a new set of decisions, and those decisions often carry long-term consequences,” Evans said in the firm’s announcement Monday. “Our work is built around helping clients navigate that moment with clarity and structure.” The firm operates as a fiduciary, free from proprietary products or institutional mandates, and limits its client roster by design.
The launch of Beacon Coast is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from UBS’s U.S. wealth management business, which accelerated sharply in 2025. According to the Diamond Consultants annual Financial Advisor Transition Report, 318 UBS financial advisors left the firm last year, with those departing advisors collectively managing close to $52 billion in assets. Industry-wide, advisor movement hit its highest level in recent memory: 11,172 financial advisors changed firms in 2025, a 16.2% increase over the 9,615 moves recorded in 2024.
UBS’s compensation plan changes were a significant driver of attrition, according to the Diamond Consultants report. Reuters separately reported that nearly 200 U.S. advisors left UBS over the past year for rivals including Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Schwab, RBC, and Raymond James. That exodus contributed to net new asset outflows in the Americas: UBS posted $14.1 billion in net outflows from the region in the fourth quarter of 2025, and a net outflow of $6 billion for the full year, according to Reuters. The firm had previously projected that as many as 600 advisors could choose to leave, according to Diamond Consultants’ prior annual report.
UBS is attempting a turnaround in the U.S. market. In March, U.S. regulators approved a national bank charter for the firm, allowing UBS to convert UBS Bank USA to a nationally chartered institution. That gives UBS the ability to offer a fuller suite of retail banking products—including checking accounts, savings accounts, and mortgages—to its U.S. client base. The bank has estimated that approximately $150 billion in deposits from roughly 700,000 U.S. households currently sit at rivals such as JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, according to The Wall Street Journal. UBS expects to introduce those products toward the end of 2027, with a broader platform rollout expected in the second half of next year, according to Reuters.
Rob Karofsky, UBS’s Americas president, has described the strategy as “about offense and defense,” designed both to deepen existing client relationships and reduce the risk that primary banking ties anchor clients at competing institutions. Meanwhile, the independent RIA channel continues to attract top talent from wirehouses, as seen with Beacon Coast and other recent breakaways. For advisors considering a move, resources like Dynasty Financial Partners’ acquisition of Optima Group and Carson’s addition of a $1.1B team from Osaic highlight the growing infrastructure supporting independent advisors.
