Integrated Partners, a Boston-based registered investment advisor and office of supervisory jurisdiction of LPL Financial, has launched a private wealth division focused on guiding business owners through exit strategies.
The new division will offer small business owners and their families financial planning, tax strategy, insurance and family office services, the firm announced Tuesday. Integrated Partners is targeting “entrepreneurs navigating defining moments such as business sales, recapitalizations and post-liquidity life planning—before, during and long after a transaction.”
The division is being led by Homer Smith, executive director and private wealth advisor, who joined Integrated Partners over 6 years ago. Smith had, over the years, built a specialization working with small business owners who need financial advice, not just at the time of sale.
“In general, if you look at the wealth management industry, if they don’t have liquidity, they’re not as interested in working with them,” he said. “What we typically find is that there’s not somebody looking out over the top of everything, and making sure [the business owners’] CPAs, their attorneys, all the different professionals they are working with are communicating and on the same page.”
Smith said research shows that few people who go to market complete a transaction within two years, and that about 80% of owners who do complete one later regret the results. He sees Integrated Private Wealth as a counter to that trend, either by providing the right advice or, at least, alerting business owners to reality.
“The mission is to build a firm that’s very specifically geared toward serving that private business owner market,” Smith said. “We’ve got this huge opportunity, and we’ve been working at it for five or six years, so we felt it was time to create a specialized offering.”
Integrated Partners, which has more than $25 billion in assets under administration, has been working with small business owners for years through its CPA Alliance network, said CEO and founder Paul Saganey. But the firm saw a market opportunity in standing up a dedicated division to serve the estimated $11 trillion in small business owner wealth set to transition as the baby boomer generation retires.
“This baby boomer generation has just kind of fallen in our lap,” Saganey said. “Thanks to Homer and his expertise and the team we’ve put together, there’s no one better positioned to provide this advice than what we’ve built here in the greater private wealth business.”
While Smith is the in-house expert, the division will be available to all 240 advisors at Integrated Partners and their clients, with the goal of having CPAs working with small business owners refer their clients to Integrated for advice.
Saganey said the advisors can help with the practical side of optimizing a business’s value, but can also address more “soft” concerns, such as legacy and culture.
“We always talk about the math and the finances and taxes and the money aspect of it,” he said. “But business owners don’t have a lot of people that they can sit down with and share their questions and sometimes their burden. They are the business owner, they’re the go-to person, and they’re supposed to have all the answers—having a network of people where they can share all their personal, professional, tax and financial questions that are designed to eliminate regret in the future is the exciting part of it.”
Integrated Partners will promote the service to its CPA Alliance and the wider market. Earlier this month, Smith spoke about the offering to business owners at an event held by best-selling business author and speaker Tony Robbins.