Integrated Partners, a registered investment advisor and office of supervisory jurisdiction of LPL Financial with more than $21 billion in assets under administration, has introduced a new W2 employee model. Under the model, Integrated will acquire 100% of an advisory firm’s business, with that team becoming employees of the firm.
The RIA expects to do both internal deals with advisors already on the Integrated platform as well as external deals. Earlier this year, it hired Blaise Liederbach as vice president of business development and acquisitions. Liederbach, who previously served as vice president and RIA business development consultant for the Midwest region in Raymond James’ custody division, is focused on sourcing external deals.
To be sure, Integrated has had a W2 model for many years; that model was aimed at advisors new to the industry who would serve smaller clients that are referred through its CPA program.
But this W2 model is different, said Rob Sandrew, chief growth officer at Integrated. It’s targeting advisors who may be nearing retirement and looking for some kind of monetization event. The firm is also seeing demand both internally and externally from advisors looking to go W2 for various other reasons.
“They built a big business, and they feel like they want to get back to what brought them to the advisory space to begin with, which is, focusing on working with clients, building deeper relationships, solving issues, like volatility we’re seeing today,” Sandrew said.
Sandrew said the firm built the model slowly and quietly because it wanted to maintain its core tenets, including its entrepreneurialism and planning orientation. For instance, advisors who come under the model continue to use their own branding.
“We want to be that partner that helps them in terms of support, whether it’s with a complex client or whether they want to change up their business model for various reasons,” Sandrew said. “How can we help them meet their goals? That was the genesis for the program.”
The firm currently has about a half dozen letters of intent signed. Sandrew says the firm’s sweet spot is with firms with between $100 million to $700 million in assets. It’s structured as an all-cash deal; there’s an upfront component, an earnout as well as a growth bonus based on performance.
Sandrew said the initial idea was for this to serve as a succession plan for advisors nearing retirement. The firm’s “second-chair program,” its training program for nextgen advisors, can serve as a pipeline for nextgen talent for retiring advisors.
“Let’s say there’s a principal of a group that decides they’re ready to have a monetization event and ultimately retire, but they don’t have that next generation,” Sandrew said. “We have a pipeline of nextgen advisors that are trained by our organization. What we generally see is, there’s a lot of consistency around the client experience because of the training we’re doing with both the nextgen advisors—we call them ‘second chair’—and the senior advisors.”
The program provides retiring advisors with a roadmap for doing so, he added.
“In parallel, we’re providing them with all the resources that Integrated is known for—our CPA program, our ability to help them work with business owners, family office platform, marketing company, investment platform, coaching, mentoring and training,” he said.
This follows news last week that Integrated recruited Corey Wealth Partners, a Boston-based team with nearly $370 million in AUM, from Claro Advisors.
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