When Deglin Kenealy began searching for his next place to make an impact, he said there were plenty of opportunities available to him in the traditional RIA space.
After all, the C-level executive with more than 30 years in the game and a track record of helping push revenue at
The problem, Kenealy said, is that he looks at the current RIA industry as vanilla ice cream.
And frankly, he was looking for a flavor with a bit more kick.
"Everybody's kind of following essentially the same model that Fisher Investments built. They say we'll customize portfolios, we'll service you, we'll do some financial planning," Kenealy told Financial Planning. "Everybody feels like they're unique. But they're unique in ways that aren't understandable to the average investor."
That's why the veteran advisor decided to join the team at
He describes the experience of being something with very little car knowledge pursuing a lot, and a salesperson breaking out states and figures in an attempt to highlight the differences between a Toyota Corolla and a Toyota Camry.
"But I'm not a car guy. I don't really know and it's not really that important to me how much horsepower there is. But what I do know is how I feel when I'm behind the wheel, and howI feel when I'm moving forward," he said. "What we're doing is we're using technology to enable advisors to pursue their passions."
Founded in 2019 by Taylor Matthews and Brad Genser, Farther's leaders say they always keep an eye on the past while pushing toward what they consider to be the future of the RIA industry.
Before Farther, Genser worked at Goldman Sachs where he founded and led an AI team dedicated to private wealth, and was an advisor on a team that managed more than $1 billion in client assets.
Matthews, meanwhile, is a former investment banker and management consultant who was a member of the leadership team at
Genser, a two-time Iraq war combat veteran who was awarded two bronze stars, told Financial Planning that a paradigm shift is currently happening in wealth management. He believes history is a useful guide to help him and his team navigate the change.
He understands that the competition in the space is fierce, and Farther is running a model that bucks the trends that have made his firm's more traditional competitors the titans of the industry.
He's also keenly aware that while the tech is what sets them apart, it is all in service of driving deeper human relationships between clients and the 40 advisors who have joined his team over the past four years.
"I think if we look at this industry, and how it's evolved, it informs where we are. We get to be here, not just because of our skills, but also because of history. And every single firm that started dealing with personal relationships started in corporate banking. That's the origin story of wealth management," Genser said. "And that became brokerage, and then there were some enterprising brokers who said, maybe I want to focus a little bit more on clients. Then we'll start independent advisors who focus on wealth. You've seen a movement from investments to total wealth."
Genser said along the way, early technology entrants came in to handle the asset management piece of the business in a more scalable way. The problem, in his view, is that the tech and the advisors weren't working in unison to offer the best of both approaches.
"I think bringing those two things together was very difficult until about the time that Farther started, and that's what we set out to do," Genser said. "We want to focus really deeply on clients. Complex clients, their total wealth, and make it scalable so that more people can get service and more advisors can build careers in this space.
"If there's one thing that you can take away from Farther, it is that we are a technology firm. But we are first and foremost a client firm."
To its credit, Farther has been working to forge relationships with others who share their vision from the start.
A successful Series A funding round that brought in $15 million last year was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, and included support from Khosla Ventures and MassMutual Ventures as new investors. That brought its total funding to $22 million
Over the past few months, the company has formalized partnerships with firms like 55ip for tax solutions; StepStone Private Wealth to give investors access to private markets; independent asset manager Ethic to help advisors work sustainable investing in portfolios; and Vint to give Farther clients a way to diversify via shares in collections of fine wine and rare spirits.
Farther is also celebrating its fourth anniversary — a graduation of sorts — by reporting total assets under management of $675 million. The firm says their current AUM total represents nearly five times the assets they had in-house last year.
Kenealy is quick to acknowledge those impressive numbers while also placing them to the side as he discusses what excites him most about the next chapter of his three decade career.
He wants to help advisors become specialists and develop books of business that truly speak to their personal passions.
To illustrate, he smiles and offers up one more analogy for the road.
"You don't see your cardiologist because you're having a skin problem on your lower left foot. You go to find a specialist who can help you to do that. And that's what we're really looking to do," he said. "Help our advisors who are really good at something specific, and then help them to grow and leverage their business in ways that are not only bringing them more potential clients, but also providing them more support and service."
Kenealy also points out that when it comes to taking the risky, non-traditional path, this isn't his first at bat.
"I've been rewarded by trying to do things differently. And, you know, no one can get away from Ken Fisher anymore, right? He's on TV. He's on every single news feed. But in 1994 or 1995, nobody knew who Ken Fisher was. And this got built in a way that was different," he said. "It's about finding this thing that is very unique and precious within the industry, because it's a nascent way of doing this business that no one else is doing.
"Everybody could see it, but they choose not to because it's easier to stay the course because you're also making a lot of money."
