Chris Radford, the president of AE Wealth Management, might have understated how busy his firm was this summer. The Topeka, Kan.-based registered investment advisory firm that provides investment solutions and management resources to other RIAs attracted another $1 billion to its platform in just three months, bringing the total to more than $5 billion.
AE Wealth Management has been one of the fastest-growing RIAs in recent years. It grew assets 304 percent year-over-year from 2016 to 2017, and assets per client grew 73 percent over the same period. But recent pricing changes have ramped up growth in 2018. While percentage growth hasn’t been as blistering, the RIA that entered the year with about $3 billion on its platform reported having $4 billion in June and added another $1 billion over the summer, the company said.
“We’ve streamlined our pricing to attract those larger RIAs,” Radford told WealthMangement.com. When the president of the firm joined in December of last year, other firms interested in AE Wealth Management’s platform had only one option; none of the services the RIA offered were à la carte. To entice larger RIAs that often have their own investment management solutions, or might prefer another provider, Radford decided to unbundle some of the platform’s services.
As the wealth management industry matures and consolidates, firms are jockeying into position to acquire others. But unlike some fast-growing firms, especially those designed from their start to consolidate wealth managers, AE Wealth Management hasn’t made a single acquisition, the firm said.
Radford said he thinks the platform as a whole is ideal for large RIAs with sophisticated investment needs that lack scale to justify having their own trading desk and others services—those within or close to a range of $150 million to $250 million in assets under management or more.
In addition to its platform’s open architecture investment solutions, RIAs have access to information they can share with investors and training seminars by AE Wealth Management’s David Bach, a co-founder and the director of Investor Education.
Bach was named a finalist for Thought Leader of the Year in the 2018 WealthManagement.com Industry Awards.
