In this third annual installment of the Top Wealth Management Professional Services Firms, WSR again honors the specialists who support the wealth management industry with a unique skillset, merging expertise from adjacent fields into the industry to serve RIAs and other firms.
Due to their specialized nature, today’s honorees are either boutiques or boutique departments within larger firms, but the influence they project and growth they help generate across the industry reach levels far beyond their size. They maintain reputations for excellence and consistently demonstrate industry leadership, and our industry is fortunate to have them.
Please join us in congratulating the PRO 4, which are named alphabetically below.
Essential Edge
Essential Edge provides outsourced compliance services for broker-dealers and RIAs, including independent AML exams, internal investigations, CEO certifications, handling branch inspections, reviewing email and advertising, and supervising sales. The firm drives customer success by prioritizing individual needs, fostering strong relationships and delivering boutique-level service.
Essential Edge has developed a culture of strong relationships with clients, employees and partners by fostering trust and loyalty through open communication and mutual respect. To ensure cost transparency, the firm utilizes flat rate pricing for nearly all engagements. It also holds weekly meetings with clients to review progress, prevent scope creep and maintain cost control.
The firm also emphasizes agility, with the ability to quickly scale operations up or down to adapt to shifting market conditions. To achieve flexibility for its clients, the firm provides access to specialized expertise, advanced technologies and external resources that may not be available in-house, in order to enhance efficiency, drive innovation and ensure consistently high-quality results.
“Outsourcing enables companies to focus on their core strengths, tap into specialized expertise and reduce costs by utilizing external resources,” says the firm’s Managing Partner, Sander Ressler. “For financial service firms, strategically delegating compliance and supervisory functions enhances efficiency, increases flexibility and provides access to a broader pool of talent and expertise.”
“By leveraging external expertise, economies of scale and lower labor costs, firms can significantly reduce operational expenses while maintaining high standards of compliance and oversight.”
Intention.ly
Growth consultancy and marketing agency Intention.ly’s client roster includes many recognized names in the financial services industry. The firm has an earned reputation for driving transformative growth and success within an increasingly competitive landscape. It emphasizes both strategy and execution to produce tangible results.
With a philosophy that marketing alone won’t help clients achieve their goals, the firm extends its scope beyond marketing – connecting marketing, sales, operations and technology. Its approach is designed to break down silos in business, foster growth-focused collaboration and align various facets of an organization for progress.
Intention.ly embraces high-stakes situations with tight deadlines, new leadership directives or accelerated product launches. It maintains a team with robust financial services expertise and industry connections and provides a broad spectrum of services including marketing, sales, communications, brand, technology, operations, client experience, talent acquisition, advisor recruitment and strategic partnerships.
Explaining the benefits of having both marketing services and growth strategy under one roof, Co-Founder and CEO Kelly Waltrich says, “Without strategy as the guide, growth services are just haphazard tactics – and even the most thoughtful plan won’t move the needle unless it’s flawlessly implemented. We built Intention.ly precisely at the intersection of data-driven strategy and meticulous execution: growth-focused visionaries working in lockstep with skilled, creative doers to drive meaningful results.”
Lone Willow Advisors
Lone Willow Advisors is a strategic consulting firm that supports RIA owners with M&A, succession and strategic capital. Its services include consulting on strategic exit and succession strategies, minority stake investments and valuations, as well as management consulting designed to optimize a business for sale.
Its M&A coaching services for RIA leaders cover identifying and executing inorganic growth, smoothing partnership dynamics, refining organizational frameworks, selecting and integrating technology solutions, and consulting on the complexities of dealmaking.
Lone Willow’s Principals have raised $250 million in private equity funding in the RIA space and helped scale RIAs from $400 million to $5 billion in assets under management (AUM). They are currently working with several RIAs.
Dan Newhall, Principal at Lone Willow, also co-founded Rise Growth Partners, a provider of capital and strategic expertise to advisory firms.
“One of the most exciting trends in the RIA space is the continued expansion of deal structures available to RIA owners seeking a succession plan,” says Newhall. “In the past, RIA sellers had to follow a few preset formulas for valuation and transaction terms. But today, they can access a wide spectrum of deal structures, each of which can be further tailored to drive very specific outcomes.”
“When RIA owners are brought up to speed about the evolving M&A landscape, they invariably find new ways to unlock value for themselves while setting their clients and employees up for continued success.”
Seward & Kissel
With 135 years of history, New York City-based Seward & Kissel focuses on financial services. Its investment management practice, which dates back over 75 years to when the firm structured the first known U.S. hedge fund, is supported by virtually all the firm’s 150 lawyers across all industry-relevant areas of expertise.
The firm’s Wealth Management Team, co-led by Partners Michael Watling and Craig Sklar, relies on cross-disciplinary expertise, which the firm leverages to advise wealth managers, investment advisers, broker-dealers, investment companies, asset managers, multi-family offices and other wealth management-adjacent clients on a full range of investment and fund management, corporate, employment, tax and transactional matters, as well as financial services regulation, compliance, examination, enforcement and litigation issues.
Attorneys in the Wealth Management Team include former officials from the SEC, FINRA, the Department of Justice, and former general counsels and chief compliance officers for wealth management firms.
Following the “know your business” principle, the firm provides tailored strategic solutions for clients, including general corporate advice, corporate governance strategies, drafting partnership and related agreements, advising on employment matters, including equity and incentive arrangements with employees and advisors, as well as succession planning. The firm also advises on mergers and acquisitions, majority and minority stake sale transactions and joint ventures.
Watling explains how technology is changing the legal environment for wealth management firms: “AI and digital assets like crypto are becoming mainstream, as is providing alternative investments to retail clients, and regulators are still trying to keep pace and figure out what that means for investor protection.”
He points to industry consolidation as another area of change. “The influence of private equity, in particular, has for several years generated a continuous flow of transactional activity that has given industry behemoths even greater market share and driven up the valuation of wealth management businesses, while still providing space for specialized independents to flourish in niche markets.”
Julius Buchanan, Editor in Chief at Wealth Solutions Report, can be reached at julius.buchanan@wealthsolutionsreport.com.
