Company History

The history of QA³ is vital to understanding both its development to this point and where it is going in the future.

Steve Wild, Founder, Chairman and CEO of QA³, began his career as an investment banker with Kirkpatrick Pettis Smith Polian, a Midwest based regional investment banking firm and then branched out on his own in the late 1970's. In 1979, he founded what would become one of the country's largest insurance marketing organizations, Financial Dynamics. Through his leadership Financial Dynamics grew to over 10,000 insurance professionals with over $10 billion in life insurance in force. In 1985, Steve founded Securities America, the nation's first fee-based broker/dealer, growing it to over 1,200 securities representatives producing nearly $120 million of gross revenue before selling it to American Express in 1998.

Over the years, Steve learned how to recognize what financial advisors wanted and what they didn't want. The sustained economic growth throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, caused advisors to question what their broker/dealer did to earn the percentage they took from their payout. Steve's solution was to create the 100% payout concept at Securities America in 1987, creating the fastest growing and one of the most successful broker/dealers in the decade of the 1990s.

Even before 1998, Steve could see that market conditions must change and the needs of advisors would change as well. But what was needed wasn't a company built around a single concept but an adaptable ever-evolving firm. In Steve's career he'd always had the vision of providing a platform on which the client's most trusted advisors could collaborate. Such a platform would allow for a more effective and flexible planning approach for the client and greater business adaptability for the advisor's practice.

The process of selling Securities America gave Steve the opportunity to perform a serious evaluation of the financial services industry and how these services were being delivered to the public. He saw a fragmented industry that built artificial barriers between the major planning professionals - the financial advisor, CPA and attorney. Further, no firm or organization was willing or even capable of creating the kind of collaboration that would serve all the professions and their clients well. Equally important, he believed that no firm or organization would commit the resources necessary to grow these independent advisors' practices. However, he also saw that the barriers were coming down and that successful planners were desperately looking for better ways to collaborate. Thus, Steve determined that the time was right to begin building his ideal company.

To fulfill his vision of professional collaboration, Steve assembled a group of companies to supply support for the planning disciplines of wealth management along with law and accounting. This company, QA³, became the hub of a complete wealth management and financial advisory concept.

No other wealth management company in the country has an infrastructure so ideally suited to supporting collaboration. In fact, QA³ has been instrumental in reducing the barriers that hampered collaboration between financial professionals.

Today, QA³ offers the finest products and specialized services available from an independent securities broker/dealer and is poised for continued growth and innovation for the future.