A newly launched firm with financial backing from the 4100 Group Financial Services purportedly offers advisors a competitive advantage when working with ultra-high-net-worth clients.
The Family Office Resource Group is a family office solution for wealth management professionals and firms that want to compete for UHNW clients’ business.
According to FORG CEO Brian Weiner, these services would be essential in the context of “one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of the world,” with trillions in motion over the next decade.
“And with a statistic like the one I just said, I think it is more than fair to say that our industry needs a different approach,” he said in an interview with WealthManagement.com. “Wealth management service professionals, attorneys, financial advisors and CPAs need and want to flip the script. And to do so requires additional resources and expertise.”
Weiner said the firm hoped to reach advisors and firms working with many clients with a “significant balance sheet.” While those firms may offer some essential services for UHNW planning (including bill pay and accounting), they may lack the “specialized expertise and infrastructure to deliver a comprehensive solution,” which is where FORG would come in.
Additionally, FORG would offer an array of UHNW-focused services RIAs likely lack, including outsourced CFO and accounting services, business legacy planning, concierge services, family governance and cybersecurity support launching next month. The firm’s products are also white-labeled so advisors can tout the services as their own.
Weiner argued that firms and advisors who work with UHNW clientele need these services in their arsenal to stay competitive.
“If they don’t differentiate, if they don’t seek to deepen and strengthen their relationship with their service offering for their clients, they’re going to miss out on an important opportunity and perhaps lose that client to other firms that are offering those solutions,” he said.
4100FS acts as a strategic investor in the space for firms offering “client-facing and client-supporting services” and owns several wealth and asset management firms in addition to FORG. These include the Maryland-based RIA Bull Harbor Capital, Red Cedar Investment Management, an institutional asset manager and Gries Financial Partners, a $1.7 billion Cleveland-based RIA.
Last month, former Dakota Wealth Management executive Carina Diamond joined Gries in the newly created chief growth officer role (while also serving the same role for 4100FS). As part of her role, she will coordinate how 4100FS’s portfolio companies can help each other, including the RIAs who could benefit from FORG’s family office services.
Weiner has 25 years of experience in family office consulting and financial services, having managed family office needs for financial services firms, banks and specialized family offices. The FORG leadership team includes 20 executives and has offices in Boca Raton and Naples, Fla., as well as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York and Washington, D.C.
Daniel Bryant is onboard as the firm’s executive chairman. In addition to being the founder and CEO of institutional investment firm Sheridan Road Financial, he leads the family office efforts for 4100FS. Like Weiner, Bryant stressed that UHNW investors often have needs transcending the “traditional” RIA services of investment advice or retirement income planning.
"Up until now, many advisors didn’t have the resources, time or expertise to address such priorities, leaving an opening for wirehouse-based private banks and independent family offices,” he said.
