Focus Financial Partners is finishing up an internal reorganization and rebranding even while making plans on its way to what its CEO sees as becoming the leading fiduciary advisor in the world.
Focus, a New York-based RIA aggregator founded in 2004, announced this week that its various advisory businesses will begin operating under the slightly shortened Focus Partners name. The announcement comes as the culmination of a plan put forward in 2023 to merge most of its 90 partner firms into five
The Colony Group and Buckingham Strategic Wealth, two large practices
"Our business is to become the leading fiduciary advice company in the world," said Focus CEO Michael Nathanson in an interview. "We want to be a company whose clients experience us as a company built just for them, and whose advisors experience us as empowering them with all the capabilities and resources that only one of the largest institutions can provide."
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The Focus logo — a hexagon meant to look like a gemstone — has also been redesigned to incorporate colors from the brand images of firms the RIA aggregator has acquired over the years. The new logo has been added to the websites of many of its partner firms.
"It's intended to reflect our new brand and the Focus Partners brand," Nathanson said. "It's all intended to reflect our evolution into something greater."
Also as part of the rebrandings,
Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman has expertise in business management, for instance. And Cardinal Point specializes in working across the Canadian-U.S. border.
So far, 14 partner firms have chosen to join Focus hubs. The hubs now generate more than half of Focus' earnings.
Nathanson, who was the CEO of Colony Group when it
"Survey after survey tells us that what clients are looking for is, of course, good asset management and they want good wealth management. But they also want more," Nathanson said. "They want tax services. They want estate planning services. They want lifestyle concierge services. They want cash management services. They want far more than what most advisors can offer on their own. And as fiduciaries, we all need to understand that we are compelled to put the interests of clients ahead of our own."
But Nathanson also understands why some practices want to maintain more control over their independent brands.
"I would tell you that I think that idea of control is somewhat of an illusion, that none of us are as truly in control as we might think," he said. "We all report to someone else, in particular to our clients. But I think that in this space of ours, we as independent advisors cherish our independence. And some might say that 'I believe it's better for me and for my clients if I remain in complete control of my business.' And I respect that."
Peter Nesvold, the founder of the consulting and investment banking firm Nesvold Capital Partners, said large, complex aggregators like Focus no doubt have much to gain from consolidating back-of-the-house operations for many of its individual practices and eliminating redundancies. But there is also wisdom in letting some firms remain more independent.
"I think with scale, one of the dangers is over: How far removed are we getting from the client service function and the personal client approach that made a firm so successful in the first place?" he said. "That's one of the things we need to be careful about when you go through these integrations."
Jamie McLaughlin, a Darien, Connecticut-based consultant to the wealth management industry, said the internal consolidation at Focus is long overdue. He said many large firms have scooped up overlapping services and back-office support through their acquisitions of those years. Shedding those redundancies, he said, is one of the surest ways to lower costs.
"And then may need to invest more in client-facing people to deepen those relationships and create more client satisfaction," McLaughlin said.
Focus' journey from private to public and back again
Focus was started more than 20 years ago mainly as a home for wirehouse advisors looking to start independent practices. It has since built itself up both with RIA acquisitions and deals brokered overseas.
Focus has much of its growth private equity money. In 2017, private owners led by the firms KKR and Stone Point Capital took a majority stake in the firm. It went public a little more than a year later. But by 2023 it was
Nathanson said this week that with new RIAs still being formed at a rapid pace, the supply of acquirable companies is showing no signs of diminishing. Focus' size and financing sources put it in a position to remain a leading dealmaker in 2025, he said.
"The RIA pool is continuing to grow on a net basis," he said. "So the opportunity remains the same. Remember that we also have the force of private equity entering into this space, which means that there's more fuel for that fire."
Nathanson has often predicted the future in the RIA industry will belong to firms that don't necessarily abandon independence but instead embrace what he calls interdependence — an ability to rely on others for services beyond providing financial planning and related wealth management services to clients. Speaking on a panel at a conference held in Beverly Hills, California, in October by the
"I think that our industry still has a lot of room to grow in terms of becoming even more capable," Nathanson told Financial Planning. "And I think that the day will come when the largest and best players in the RIA industry have the same kind of name recognition as the large banks and brokerages do today."
