Concurrent Investment Advisors has drawn another team from its former broker/dealer, Raymond James, which will launch as TAVO Wealth.
The Houston-based RIA has $1.2 billion in assets under management, and is led by advisors David Ahlquist, John O’Shea, Nick Troiano and Steve VanNostrand. It is now custodying with Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management Services.
The group left Raymond James’ employee model to launch with Tampa, Fla.-based Concurrent in a setup that includes the RIA platform provider taking a minority stake in the new RIA, said CEO Nate Lenz. He said the TAVO team was drawn to Concurrent’s model because it could own and run the firm, allowing it to make its own decisions in areas such as custodial selection.
“There’s a meaningful structural difference between being an employee underneath a broker/dealer and corporate RIA structure versus being a business owner in terms of not just owning the end clients, but owning the business itself and having every arrow in the quiver to be able to align incentives with your team and structure the business in a way that can allow you to take advantage to the capital that’s coming in the space,” Lenz said. “There’s also the enterprise value you can create there, which I would say is a big attraction for a lot of these teams.”
The addition pushes Concurrent’s total assets under management and administration to more than $20 billion, with Lenz bullish on the pipeline of firms joining across IBD, wirehouse and independent channels.
“We’re taking the minority stake; they still maintain control of the business,” he said. “What they get, in a lot of ways, is the best of both worlds … the multiple expansion that comes along with a traditional roll up without having to put on the fatigues and salute the flag.”
The members of the TAVO team had been with Raymond James for about four to seven years, according to BrokerCheck.
Lenz said he sees space for Concurrent’s 1099 affiliation model and the W-2 aggregators, particularly for firms more interested in selling with succession in mind. But he said advancements in technology and capabilities have made it more attractive to run a platform RIA than it was a decade ago, when he was working as a vice president of succession planning and acquisitions at Raymond James.
“The technology has evolved to a point where it kind of favors the nimble, and we’re taking advantage of that, going out and getting the best of breed solutions, integrating them and investing in our native infrastructure to make sure it all talks to each other in a seamless way,” he said. “Now we can ultimately be able to lay AI on top of it, which I think is going to favor [the RIA] space.”
He added that Concurrent has taken minority stakes in seven RIAs after launching a minority capital program last year. Since starting the program, he said some firms have signed on to Concurrent’s platform offerings on an à la carte basis. That was not the program’s initial plan, but the service has developed organically, Lenz said.
“As we’re growing and evolving, we see it as a way that we can kind of expand our addressable market in serving entrepreneurial firms on the same chassis that we do with our existing advisors,” he said.
