NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Summit Trail Advisors announced today that Thomas Harms has joined the firm as its Chief Operating Officer based in its New York office. In this role, he will join the management team and will lead the firm’s day to day business operations. Given Mr. Harms’ deep experience, he will oversee operations, risk, compliance, vendors and administrative staff. Mr. Harms will report to Jack Petersen, Managing Partner of Summit Trail Advisors.
Mr. Harms previously worked at Fidelity Investments as a Senior Vice President in the Practice Management and Consulting Group where he led the Risk and Compliance effort. In that role, he provided leading-edge thought leadership to Fidelity’s 2600 Advisors. Prior to that, he worked as a Managing Director, Global Operational Risk Officer at Morgan Stanley’s Global Wealth Management division from 1986 -2011.
According to Mr. Petersen, “We are delighted to add Tom Harms to our management team in the new role of Chief Operating Officer. Summit Trail has expanded rapidly since our launch seven months ago and we are pleased to add an executive of Tom’s stature to our management team as we continue to build out.”
“I am excited to join the Summit Trail Team, helping them fulfill their vision of delivering investment prowess and private bank resources through their unique independent boutique,” said Mr. Harms. “Summit Trail impressed me with their laser focus on excellence. I look forward to leveraging my risk and compliance skills as we continue to grow the business.”
Summit Trail is an independent advisory firm founded on July 24th, 2015 with offices in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Summit Trail Advisors has experienced rapid growth over the last six months bringing on top producing advisors in New York, Boston and San Francisco and adding significant new clients across the U.S.
Summit Trail Advisors is a Network Advisory Firm on Dynasty Financial Partners’ industry-leading platform of integrated wealth management services and technology. Dynasty develops, sources and integrates wealth management capabilities, solutions and technology into its open-architecture platform to help independent advisors protect and grow their clients’ wealth.
Thomas Harms Biography
Prior to joining Summit Trail Advisors as Chief Operating Officer, Thomas Harms worked at Fidelity starting in 2011 to help develop Institutional Wealth Services’ unique offering for large, complex advisors. (Advanced Wealth Ventures). At the same time, given his expertise in risk and compliance issues, he assumed responsibility for Fidelity’s risk and compliance consulting effort, developing and promoting guidance and thought leadership on top risks in the Advisor community.
In 1986, Mr. Harms joined Morgan Stanley in their Private Wealth Group as Branch Operations Manager for the flagship New York office. In 1990, he transferred to the Division’s Tokyo Branch where he assumed full Branch Management responsibilities. While in Japan, Mr. Harms concentrated on risk management and lending practices within the fledgling international group.
In 1991, he transitioned to the Division’s Hong Kong office where he spent the next 3 years in helping build the Private Wealth infrastructure in South East Asia. Responsibilities included staffing, real estate, integration issues and legal regulatory compliance. After successfully overseeing the build out in Asia, Mr. Harms moved again to London where the supervisory infrastructure of the Private Wealth organization was reviewed and revamped.
He remained in London until late 1996 when he returned to Hong Kong with responsibilities for the growing Asian business in China and Singapore. He returned to the United States in 1997 as Head of PWM Branch Administration, where he spent considerable time addressing issues of policy & procedure within the Private Wealth segment of the Firm. After the merger, Mr. Harms worked with a joint team to address structural issues between Private Wealth and newly merged Retail Division.
In 2000, Mr. Harms returned to London where he co-led the program to develop a “Pan-European” retail platform for the Division. By 2002, he was responsible for all Operational aspects of the combined Retail Division outside of the United States. He assumed global responsibility for Private Wealth Operations and Administration in 2003. Again, his primary focus was on Operational Risk management in the Division.
In late 2004, Mr. Harms assumed the role of Global Operational Risk Officer and Head of US Wealth Management Risk. In this role, Mr. Harms was responsible for insuring that MSSB’s diverse businesses were adhering to best Risk Management practices as defined by Basel and the Firm’s Core Team. Under his aegis, Morgan Stanley’s controls and compliance improved dramatically; leading to improved performance of the Wealth Management unit.
About Summit Trail Advisors
Summit Trail Advisors is an investment-focused independent wealth management boutique with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. The firm leverages leading research providers and their in-house research team to design investment solutions while sourcing unique, highly specialized investments. They are a large institutional client of the street and source investment opportunities, credit solutions and other professional services for their clients on a completely open architecture basis. For more information, please visit http://summittrail.com.
