RIA aggregator Focus Financial Partners has announced a new corporate brand and brand structure for its “hub” firms, giving those businesses the Focus name. As a result, The Colony Group and Buckingham Strategic Wealth will operate as Focus Partners Wealth, while Buckingham Strategic Partners, the RIA’s turnkey asset management platform, will now be Focus Partners Advisor Solutions.
About a year ago, Focus hatched an ambitious plan to consolidate about 90 independently operated subsidiaries into a handful of large firms that would operate as hubs. That followed the firm’s decision to go private in a sale to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. All three Focus founders, including former COO Rajini Kodialam, former M&A Head Lenny Chang and CEO Rudy Adolf, exited around that time.
So far, 14 RIAs have been consolidated into one of the five hubs.
Now, the firm aims to standardize the branding across those hubs. Earlier this month, Focus named Cardinal Point Capital Management as its fifth hub. Under the new branding, Cardinal Point will now be known as Cardinal Point, Focus Partners Canada.
Other hubs include Kovitz Investment Group, which has been rebranded to Kovitz, a Focus Partners Firm; SCS Financial, now SCS Financial, Focus Partners Family Office and OCIO; and Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, which will operate as Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, Focus Partners Business Management.
The firm has also redesigned its corporate logo and website “to reflect the further unification of the firms throughout its network, incorporating each of their individual brand colors,” according to a statement.
“Our goal is for our clients to experience us as a company built just for them and for our advisors to experience the empowerment of being equipped with the capabilities and resources typically offered only by the largest institutions in the world,” said Michael Nathanson, CEO of Focus Financial Partners, in a statement. “When people see or hear the name Focus Partners, that is the experience we want evoked. Our redesigned logo is also intended to reinforce that association. Its colors reflect the many colors historically used by our partner firms, and its structure represents the collective energy and capabilities that Focus offers through its ecosystem of interdependent fiduciary advice teams.”
In the last year, Focus has continued consolidating its partner firms, including merging The Colony Group with GW & Wade, a Massachusetts-based RIA with $10.4 billion in managed assets. Last year, Focus combined The Colony Group with partner firm Buckingham Strategic Wealth to create a $50.2 billion RIA.
In June, Focus shifted Connectus Wealth Advisers’ U.S.-based business lines into The Colony Group and Kovitz Investment Group Partners. Subsequently, Kovitz bought the $2.6 billion partner firm Relative Value Partners Group, bringing Kovitz to more than $24 billion in assets.
In October, Kovitz acquired Fort Pitt Capital Group, a $5.9 billion Pittsburgh-based Focus partner firm. The deal boosted Kovitz’s assets to nearly $30 billion.
