Welcome back to the 226th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Paul Saganey. Paul is the president and founder of Integrated Partners, a hybrid RIA headquartered in Waltham, Mass., that manages over $10 billion for about 18,000 affluent clients.
What’s unique about Paul, though, is how he’s generated hypergrowth for his firm through building strategic alliances with accountants, acting as a resource for CPA firms to build out their own “financial services divisions,” where Integrated Partners supports behind the scenes and the CPAs can remain the “heroes” for their clients throughout the process.
In this episode, we talk in depth about how Paul learned early in his career about the power of referrals from professionals with established relationships when he was an insurance agent creating estate plans for the high-net-worth clients of wirehouse advisors, how Paul expanded that model and generated initial success by doing financial and estate plans for partners at CPA firms, why it became clear for Paul that he needed to get really clear upfront that while the CPAs still “owned” the client relationship, it was Paul’s responsibility to actually make and implement the recommendations, and how client relationships change when professionals each charge a separate fee for their respective services.
We also talk about the importance Paul places on being product-and-solution agnostic and having a platform where he can remain product-and-solution agnostic, his key decision in 2016 to reexamine his business model and ultimately form his own RIA (and how that set the stage for him to change his vision for his firm to gain a national reach), and the tremendous growth that Paul is now generating by attracting outside advisory firms who want to “tuck in” to Integrated’s CPA referral program and get themselves in front of higher-net-worth clients.
And be sure to listen to the end, where Paul discusses how “moving up the complexity curve” by working with wealthier clients helps advisors fight the “fear” of fee compression (as they are able to more consistently charge higher fees for providing advice on more complex needs), Paul’s vision for the coming years for Integrated Partners to expand its reach by doubling the number of CPA firms that it partners with and the “Who Not How” methodology that Paul has used throughout his career to not only become a better business leader but also find ways to collaborate with others to create synergies.
So whether you’re interested in learning how Paul built out Integrated Partners’ CPA strategic alliance program, how he’s leveraged that program to expand nationally, or why working with wealthier clients can help advisors combat the fear of fee compression, then I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast with Paul Saganey.
