Only a relatively small number of RIAs are 100% employee-owned. Rarer still are those with a program to promote their financial advisors to partner. One such stand-out is Aspiriant, which each year makes about four client-facing advisors a partner.
In an interview with ThinkAdvisor, CEO and co-founder Rob Francais puts it this way:
"We see this [wealth management] as a talent war going forward. Everyone focuses on clients; that's our focus as well. But we also focus on the trusted advisor's experience. How do you create an environment where advisors are also serviced well?"
He answers that question in our conversation.
Aspiriant, on Barron's top RIAs list for more than a decade, manages $15 billion in assets. Its average client size: $5 million. About a third of its business is family office clients, with average assets under management of $100 million.
The RIA, which manages a handful of private mutual funds, was co-founded in a large 2008 merger and is now a meld of nine organizations.
In the interview, Francais talks about the RIA's inorganic growth strategy and how it's been affected by private equity's investing in firms.
As a tax partner at Deloitte & Touche, he specialized in the planning needs of family-owned businesses.
At Aspiriant, he's leading a firm providing highly personalized services to HNW and UHNW clients while striving to cater just as much to its advisors.
Here are excerpts from our interview:
THINKADVISOR: What distinguishes Aspiriant from most other RIAs?
ROB FRANCAIS: We see this as a talent war going forward. Everyone focuses on clients, and that's our focus as well. But we also focus on the trusted advisor's experience.
How do you create an environment where advisors are also serviced well?
We bring the collective wisdom of our advisor group to bear on client relationships. At the same time, we want to have a superior organization that caters to the trusted advisor.
Apart from credentials, what must the advisors that you hire have?
Our firm focuses on high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. They have complex needs. So advisors must be able to relate to that client. We have a very high-touch personalized service; offering it [requires] that skill set.
We want clients to have clarity about the risks they're taking and to understand the decisions they're making. We want them to have peace of mind about how their financial affairs are being managed.
We need the type of advisor who can connect with clients in a very personalized way.
Tell me about your partnership program.
It was very important to the founders that the organization remain 100% employee-owned. Today we have 230 employees; and 85 are partners, of whom 65 are advisors. Each year approximately four client-facing advisors become partners.
We think our client service effort should extend beyond the typical and all the way to the culture of the firm, how it's owned, how employees are compensated, the management of the organization, how you govern it.
And all of that has to hang together to deliver superior client service.
What else is different about your partnership program?
Our model is unique because we look at it through the eyes of our clients. We have two communities we're trying to solve for: affluent client families and the trusted advisors. We really do think of those as equals.
We're trying to reconcile the needs of both and [bring] them together in a balanced way inside a durable organization.
How do you decide to make an advisor a partner?
If, say, an advisor is at the director level with a critical mass that's following their advice — and they're checking all the other boxes — and has been with us long enough, we don't want them to be a partner — we need them to be a partner.
What do you offer to the family office world?
Those are our largest and most complex clients, about a third of the business.
We're paying bills for them, keeping records, doing accounting, estate planning, philanthropy, investment advisory, running their foundations, working on business-related activity.
So typically those families have 10 or 12 Aspiriant professionals [servicing them], and often four to six of the 12 are partners of the organization.
