Nikolee Turner, Managing Director, Business Consulting for Schwab Advisor Services, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, to discuss how each business combination between financial advisory firms has unique goals and considerations.
Schwab’s business consulting team assists advisors with their merger and acquisition (M&A) strategies, both as buyers and as sellers. The framework has a three-phase approach: Envision, Prepare, and Connect.
M&A has been transforming the advisory industry, and keeping up with it can be time consuming. Advisors are curious about how the M&A landscape is changing, and Schwab’s consulting team can share unbiased information that can help advisors make decisions about their practice. Advisors have an interest in how to find a partner, how to prepare their practice, and all of the steps involved in a transaction.
For each seller, there can be a number of potential buyers. Those seeking to sell their practice should evaluate the service offerings of each potential partner, as it may be more cost effective to combine firms than for an advisor to unilaterally expand their service offerings. Some advisors may prefer to acquire talent through a business combination than to search in the market to hire the talent.
Turner encourages advisors to login to the Schwab Advisor Center where they can access a white paper on M&A topics.
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