Integrated Partners CEO Sees 'Exciting' Years Ahead for RIAs

Q&A November 27, 2024 at 05:45 PM
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The RIA space has seen continued action and expansion over the past several years. But that’s only the beginning, according to Paul Saganey, CEO and founder of Integrated Partners.

“We’re thinking big. The next five to 10 years will be the most exciting five to 10 years of my career,” he tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview.

Saganey is a 2024 ThinkAdvisor Luminaries awards finalist for Executive of the Year, and his firm is a finalist in Thought Leadership and Education.

Among Saganey’s plans is adding 300 accounting firms to its current 200 in Integrated’s CPA Alliance program, which partners the RIA’s advisors with CPAs, who provide them access to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Integrated, which Saganey opened in 1996 and now manages $20 billion in assets, plans to acquire additional practices next year. Its 2023 purchase of Laurel Wealth Advisors was the firm’s first acquisition.

In the interview with Saganey, who coaches and trains Integrated financial advisors to work with their wealthiest clients, he notes that the favorite part of the CEO’s job is serving as an advisor himself. “I’m an advisor, and I always have been. I love it,” Saganey says.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What drives your firm’s growth?

PAUL SAGANEY: We have a process: “Let’s imagine a future that’s more exciting than our past.” That’s what we push ourselves to do.

Integrated Partners’ growth has been organic. But last year you acquired Laurel Wealth Advisors, with more than $2.25 billion in assets under management. Are you planning to make more acquisitions in the near term?

Yes. We’ll be very selective, but probably there’ll be a lot of activity next year with transactions announced.

[Acquisitions] are one of the trends in the [RIA] industry, so we want to be sure we’re right there in the middle of it.

What’s the future of RIAs in general?

Amazingly exciting. We’re thinking big. The next five to 10 years will be the most exciting five to 10 years of my career.

How does The Integrated CPA Alliance work?

Accounting firms give our advisors access to the type of wealthy clients they typically can’t find on their own, and they share in the revenue.

The advisors help build out financial services divisions within the accounting practices.

We have 200 accounting firms in the program. We’re looking to grow to 500.

What else is in it for your advisors?

We help them become more impactful and effective working with those high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. They lean on us heavily to help them up their game.

How do you do that?

With study groups, training and even role playing so that they’ll be much more effective when they get those large opportunities from the accounting firms.

We help them communicate their good ideas in a way that [influences] the client to take action.

We teach them how to make very complex thoughts and ideas easier to understand and how to present those to the client.

Are UHNW clients demanding? Do they think they know it all about investing?

It depends. At the very beginning, we go through a bit of a diagnostic process where we look at everything they’re doing.

When we point out they’re not doing the best they can possibly do for themselves and their families, they quickly become serious and want to learn more.

What’s key in coaching your advisors?

When advisors walk in the door trying to present something without understanding exactly where the client is [in their lives], they’re in a tough spot.

Our process is all about understanding and diagnosing their current situation.

A concept I use is the “complexity curve.” Clients have two levels of complexity: One is that their finances get more complex over time.

The other is that so do their personal lives: Their children marry; and then they have grandchildren.

We’re most impactful and can make a big difference when their personal lives become more complex.

What prompted you to launch the CPA Alliance?

I was a financial advisor with Cigna Financial Advisors and working inside the wirehouse community [Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Smith Barney]. Advisors would bring me in to do all the planning for their wealthiest clients.

The only challenge was that we couldn’t manage the money. After we did the planning, the assets [stayed with] the wirehouse advisors.

1996 was the first year that accounting firms in Massachusetts could share in revenue, with the approval of their clients. We were one of the first to dig into that.

I saw the opportunity to do the same kind of financial planning with wealthy clients that I was doing at the wirehouses but also manage the assets. So I started my own firm and the CPA Alliance Program.

What is the biggest challenge for financial advisors today?

Understanding where they are along the continuum of the business life stages.

The industry has advisors who are five to 10 years away from potentially retiring or selling their practice.

So in coaching our advisors, I spend a lot of time talking about where they are and what they should be looking at going forward and making plans accordingly.

Speaking of going forward, what are your thoughts about artificial intelligence in the advisory space?

As a firm, we’re embracing AI. At the end of this year and through next year, we’ll be introducing the advisors to a new technology platform fueled by AI capabilities.

We want to be at the forefront of AI integration in financial services. We’re trying to think about the possibilities of using AI and then building our technology [to meet those needs].

What’s an example of how your advisors are using AI now?

It’s helping them answer questions on our tech platform, such as those around financial planning or running their practices more efficiently.

Instead of having to search for the answers, our internal AI structure is there to help guide them along the way. It’s been very popular.

On what do you train your AI technology? That is, where do those answers come from?

They’re from our team. We’re being very careful.

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