RBC Pulls $2B BofA Private Bank Duo in La Jolla

Second BofA Private Bank hire into RBC La Jolla in about a month — Behun (MD) and Harris (SVP) with $2B+ firm-reported assets, under a Merrill-trained SoCal complex director, inside RBC's push to add 600 U.S. advisors by 2029.

RBC Wealth Management just pulled more than $2 billion in Bank of America Private Bank assets into La Jolla.

Lisa M. Behun and Dirk J. Harris joined RBC's La Jolla, California, office on September 11 from Bank of America Private Bank, according to AdvisorHub, InvestmentNews, and Family Wealth Report, all citing the hiring firm's announcement. Behun arrives as a managing director; Harris as a senior vice president. Senior financial associate Kevin Wilson and senior client associate Erin Marshall moved with them. The roughly $2 billion figure is firm-reported pre-hire client assets.

This is not an RIA story. It is a private-bank exit into a traditional W-2 brokerage seat — the channel WirehouseHUB tracks when the logo on the door changes and the clients still sit on an employee-advisor stack.

BrokerCheck shows both left Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith registration on September 11, 2026 — the securities registration arm of the Bank of America wealth franchise they had been operating inside. Behun (CRD 5417611) started at Banc of America Investment Services in 2007, joined Merrill in 2009, and is registered with RBC Capital Markets as of September 11 at 4250 Executive Square, Suite 800, in La Jolla. Harris (CRD 4528418), a CFP with more than 25 years in the business per InvestmentNews, first registered with Stanford Group Company in 2003, then worked at D&B Capital Management and AlphaCore Capital before joining Merrill in 2018. His RBC investment-adviser registration went live September 14; broker-dealer registration cleared September 21 — a normal lag behind the firm's announced join date.

InvestmentNews described Behun's practice as focused on high-net-worth families and business owners, combining wealth strategy, financial planning, and credit with guidance rooted in behavioral finance. A San Diego Symphony board bio still on the orchestra's site fills in her path before the Private Bank seat: University of North Dakota summa cum laude in business administration; owned and operated an excess-and-surplus brokerage in Minneapolis; work on a captive insurer and with the Minnesota Bankers Association; a move into San Diego's marine industry; then U.S. Trust in 2007, later folded into Bank of America Private Bank. Harris's book, InvestmentNews said, centers on affluent families and business owners navigating complicated finances and long-horizon planning. Neither advisor immediately commented when AdvisorHub reached out through social channels. A Bank of America spokesperson also did not respond.

Wilson posted on LinkedIn that after five years at Bank of America Private Bank he had joined RBC alongside Behun, Harris, Damon Couch, and Marshall — a public confirmation that the La Jolla private-bank pipeline is stacking as a unit, not as isolated one-offs.

The team reports to Southern California Complex Director Marcel TenBerge. RBC's August 8, 2024 newsroom announcement put him over 11 branch offices and 215 employees after 19 years at Merrill, most recently as Pasadena Central Valley market executive. He also led Merrill's San Francisco, Phoenix, and Oklahoma markets after a decade as a producing advisor. At RBC he is a senior managing director based out of the Beverly Hills complex. In the firm's statement on this hire, TenBerge said he was thrilled Lisa and Dirk joined, noting clients come to them during pivotal moments such as liquidity events or preparing for retirement, and that the team takes a comprehensive approach to wealth planning and wants to leverage RBC's platforms to take client service further.

That framing lands differently once you map the office. Last month, RBC hired another Bank of America private banker, Damon Couch, into the same La Jolla branch, according to the firm. Indyfin registration data puts Couch at RBC Capital Markets in La Jolla from August 1, 2026. Wilson's LinkedIn post names Couch in the same cohort. For Bank of America Private Bank talent in San Diego County, La Jolla at RBC is becoming a known exit ramp.

Private bankers often struggle to move assets because clients are tightly tied to the bank's balance sheet, credit, and trust stack. Brokerages have still been willing to take that bet in a hot recruiting market. AdvisorHub's recent tape shows the lane: a Bank of America private banker with about $3 billion jumped to Citigroup, a Fort Lauderdale team with about $3.1 billion moved to NewEdge Wealth, and earlier a Tampa team with about $1.3 billion went to UBS. Behun and Harris are another data point — and they chose RBC, not an independent RIA.

RBC's broader U.S. tape this summer stayed mostly wire-to-wire. In July the firm announced the six-person KPM Wealth Advisory Group from Stifel in Dallas with nearly $1.6 billion in client assets, and Focus Wealth Management from UBS in Palm Beach Gardens with about $1.5 billion. AdvisorHub separately flagged a billion-dollar Morgan Stanley team into Virginia in August. That recruiting push sits under a public growth plan: RBC Wealth Management CEO Neil McLaughlin has said the firm aims to add 600 U.S. advisors by 2029, with Southern California among the markets where it is disproportionately focused, alongside New York, Florida, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Chicago.

Winthrop & Co.'s 2026 firm read on RBC frames the destination the same way the trade press does: established teams, often from wirehouses and bank wealth arms, that want an employee seat with City National Bank behind them for lending and deposits and RBC Capital Markets for the institutional stack — not an independent or hybrid RIA seat inside the firm.

For producers still inside Bank of America Private Bank, the signal in San Diego County is concrete. La Jolla just absorbed a named managing director and senior vice president with more than $2 billion in firm-reported assets, plus their support bench, on the heels of another BofA private banker into the same office — under a complex director hired from Merrill specifically to recruit in Southern California. The destination was not independence. It was RBC Wealth Management.

Asset transfer risk on private-bank books is real. Firms keep writing the checks anyway. That is the recruiting market right now.

WirehouseHUB will keep tracking RBC's California private-bank pipeline and Bank of America's outbound private-bank losses as more of these seats fill.