Signature Estate & Investment Advisors, a $30 billion hybrid registered investment advisor based in Los Angeles, has hired a chief financial officer about a month after its prior finance chief left for a competitor.
Stephen Masterson, who comes with executive-level experience in finance, operations, and risk management after working at some of the largest accounting and consulting firms, replaces Ahmed Hassanein as CFO.
Hassanein left SEIA earlier this month after about two years in the role to take the same position at Savant Wealth Management.
“Stephen’s appointment represents an important expansion of our leadership team as we continue to grow with intention,” said Matt Matrisian, who was recently appointed to the new role of president for SEIA, via email. “He brings a proven track record of value creation, having led M&A transactions and capital strategy across both publicly traded and private equity-backed institutions.”
Masterson’s hire follows a larger leadership push by SEIA co-founder and CEO Brian Holmes. That included bringing on Matrisian from AssetMark to speed up the firm’s organic and inorganic growth and improve advisor services. The company also made two internal promotions for a chief compliance officer and vice president of investment services to help create what Holmes, at the time, said was a “cohesive integration team.”
SEAI sold an equity stake to private equity firm Reverence Capital Partners in 2022, partly to launch an acquisition strategy. Since then, it has nearly doubled its assets under management and, in 2024, made its largest acquisition, a $2 billion RIA based in Cleveland.
Masterson joins the RIA space as the founder and principal of SM+Co LLC, a business consulting, accounting and risk management firm. He also had a stint as head of the U.S. financial practice for tax and accounting firm BDO, and before that, was chief credit officer for Charles Schwab.
The executive had also previously held CFO roles at New York-based Sterling National Bank and Santa Barbara Bank and Trust. Early in his career, Masterson worked for consulting and accounting firms Grant Thornton and Arthur Anderson / Ernst & Young.
“His experience as a CFO, operating partner and advisor to financial institutions and portfolio companies adds significant depth to future opportunities for growth,” Matrisian said.
Hires like Masterson are indicative of an RIA space that has been evolving, in part from private equity investment, toward a professional leadership layer skilled in finance and operations, said Phil Waxelbaum, founder and CEO of Masada Consulting.
“We’re getting grown up,” Waxelbaum said of the advisor space. “We’re hiring professional managers that have huge proven capacities in financial engineering.”
The consultant and recruiter who had worked at J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and UBS, said the trend is new to the advisor space, which had previously been shaped “from the bottom up out of a cottage industry.” Now, executives who may have previously gone into the investment banking space are being drawn to the opportunities and scale of RIA consolidation.
“If you look at people who are moving into the executive role in the RIA space, these are not advisors who are coming out of the trenches,” he said. “What they are doing, very intelligently, is building enterprises that will have monetary value in multiples of what they have now.”
#SEIA #Hires #Finance #Consulting #Accounting #Vet #CFO