North Rim Financial Group is a three-advisor St. George financial-planning team — Samuel R. Bates, Darin Frandsen, and Adam Fluckiger — that left Edward Jones in 2022 to join the Raymond James Financial Services independent advisor channel. The team manages approximately $250 million in client assets, and the move was substantial enough to attract trade-press coverage in Financial Advisor Magazine and Investment News.
What “independent channel” actually means
The structural detail here matters and is easy to misread. Raymond James operates two distinct advisor models: corporate branches, where the advisors are employees of Raymond James, and the independent channel, where the advisors own their own practice and brand and Raymond James provides clearing, technology, and compliance infrastructure. North Rim is in the second model. Bates, Frandsen, and Fluckiger own North Rim Financial Group, set their own service model, and are technically business owners using the Raymond James platform rather than working for it.
Effective Southern Utah tenure is longer than 2022
The 2022 Raymond James affiliation date understates the team’s actual track record with Southern Utah clients. Frandsen has been in the local market since 2008. Bates and Fluckiger joined him at Edward Jones in 2011. The team has been working together for more than a decade; the 2022 transition was a structural move, not a new practice. The book of clients followed the team because the relationships were with the advisors rather than with the prior broker-dealer.
A meaningful financial-advisor team in St. George
$250 million AUM at a three-advisor independent-channel team is a substantive Southern Utah practice — large enough to staff infrastructure, small enough that clients work with the named advisors. The structural choice to move from Edward Jones’s branch model to Raymond James’s independent channel is itself a signal: the team chose ownership and operational control over the captive-employee path.
Disclosure
FINRA BrokerCheck verification is straightforward for all three advisors. Trade-press coverage corroborates the team’s history and AUM. Web presence routes through the Raymond James platform site for the team.
Where this lands
A locally rooted three-advisor team with documented Southern Utah tenure since 2008, structural ownership of their own practice, and substantial AUM — this is a credible financial-planning candidate, with the broker-dealer affiliation clearly disclosed.