Csenge Advisory Group Runs Compliance for 70 Advisors with One Person

Challenge

When Michael Schmidtke took over compliance at Csenge Advisory Group in 2024, he brought a philosophy shaped by decades working the business side of financial services. “As a compliance officer, I’m not here to say no,” Schmidtke says. “I’m interested in whatever works.”

At Csenge, an RIA aggregator, the task was to supervise dozens of quasi-independent firms, most of them dual-registered with outside broker-dealers, across nearly 40 custodians. But the legacy tools he inherited were not built to scale. Email surveillance ran on a system he had come to loathe at previous firms. Pulling advisor data out of dated portfolio platforms was its own ordeal.

“The problem is all the legacy software you're working with,” laments Michael. “That's the problem and they know it. They make it hard to get data out.”

Solution

Michael joined as Csenge was already weighing compliance systems, including one from its outside consultant. He asked Hadrius for a demo. It did not take long to see his way forward.

“As soon as we finished, Hadrius was a no-brainer for me,” he says. “Once I saw what they were doing, I thought, ‘This is just going to be the way forward; everyone's going to be trying to do this.’ How wonderfully fortunate to be at a spot where you can say, ‘If I were building it today, I’d do it this way.’”

Rather than asking dozens of custodians to set up bespoke data feeds, Hadrius connected to them through APIs and Plaid connections.

“It’s very smart; very much built for today to deal with stuff from yesterday,” Michael says of Hadrius’ AI-native infrastructure.

It was also necessary.

“I’ve got 60-something people spread across 28 firms that I have no easy way of getting my hands on without something that’s plug-and-play,” he says.

“I’ll get an email that something’s sitting in Hadrius and it’s approved in minutes. I can do it from my phone. For anyone who's dealt with broker-dealer compliance, that's light-years ahead.”
– Michael Schmidtke, CCO

Michael liked what he saw once the system was running. “I like seeing more rather than less,” he explains. “The minute you miss something, it calls into question whether you can trust the AI. So I treat it like a research assistant. They might be really smart, but until they produce what I want — repeatedly — I trust but verify.”

With Hadrius

Marketing review moves at a different speed now. “I’ll get an email that something’s sitting in Hadrius and it’s approved in minutes,” Michael says. "I can do it from my phone. For anyone who's dealt with broker-dealer compliance, that's light-years ahead.”

Rapid feedback has changed how Csenge’s advisors behave. One advisor produces five video shorts every Monday and has learned from the flags how to pre-clean his own scripts. “Way easier for him and for me,” Michael says. “The experience makes people market more, because it’s not painful for them like it used to be.” His dual-registered advisors now route materials through Hadrius before their broker-dealer’s review because “it’s so much quicker and easier.”

Hadrius got its toughest test when SEC examiners arrived. Michael turned over his Hadrius-produced marketing materials in full. “They didn't ask a single question about any piece that came out of Hadrius,” he says. “Not one.”

With marketing, text messaging, websites, certifications, and personal trading all in one system, Michael runs the program by himself. “There are very few things left that aren't in the system, which makes it a one-stop shop.” This powerful leverage suggests to Michael that firms setting up compliance teams today need only “one junior hire running Hadrius day to day, with a senior officer reserved for judgment calls.”

“Hadrius is a great example of working smarter, not harder,” Michael says. Peers keep asking how one person manages a firm this complex. “I say, ‘I have a really great system. Have you heard of Hadrius? Well, you should.’”