FOUNDER’S STORY
Built through experience. Built for advisors.
Thomas C. Prescott, Jr.
Managing Member & CEO
Tom Prescott spent more than three decades working across financial services before co-founding Advisory Services Network.
He began his career in 1980 with Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, gaining experience across operations, supervision, trading, and both retail and institutional sales. In 1987, he founded Prescott & Associates, a consulting practice that later merged with another firm to create Mainstay Capital Markets Consultants.
At Mainstay, Tom worked alongside his partners and consultants advising broker-dealers, investment advisers, hedge funds, financial institutions, clearing firms, custodians, regulators, and securities attorneys. The firm’s work included the development of new broker-dealers and investment advisers, the reengineering of operational and compliance infrastructure, and assistance with regulatory matters. Mainstay also participated in international capital-markets projects across Canada, Hong Kong, Fiji, Egypt, and Bangladesh.
These experiences provided Tom with a broad view of how financial firms were structured, how regulatory and operating systems interacted, and where traditional models created constraints for both firms and their advisors.
From industry experience to an independent platform.
THE FOUNDATION OF ASN
During the early 2000s, more advisors began establishing independent firms to gain greater control over their businesses, brands, client relationships, and data. Mainstay was closely involved in that movement toward independence.
But greater independence also meant assuming responsibility for the regulatory, compliance, risk-management, operational, custodial, vendor, and technology infrastructure required to run the business.
In 2010, Tom and his partners founded Advisory Services Network to provide the platform and infrastructure necessary to create and support an independent advisory firm while preserving advisor ownership and control.
ASN was built from that consulting experience and developed independently of product providers, private equity, and venture capital. Since its founding, the firm has grown primarily through advisor retention and referrals.
