Mercer Advisors announced two acquisitions Thursday that total nearly $900 million in advised assets. The deals bring Mercer’s acquisition count to 101 firms since it starting buying other advisory practices in 2016.
The new firms are Tufton Capital Management, which brings $810 million in assets and augments Mercer’s footprint in the Washington, D.C., region, and Lewis Wealth Management, a $75 million advisory firm based in the Denver area.
Executives at both firms said their decision to join Mercer was about accessing resources and support to serve clients more comprehensively. They also cited Mercer's internal culture and fiduciary-minded service model.
“Supported by this robust platform, I can focus on what matters most — helping our clients achieve their financial goals — while ensuring they benefit from a broader range of services and expertise,” Austin Lewis, head of Lewis Wealth Management, said in a statement. “This partnership strengthens my commitment to fiduciary-first financial planning and positions my clients for sustained success well into the future.”
“Clients choose Tufton Capital for our integrity, experience and long-standing commitment to personalized advice," noted Chad Meyer, Tufton's president. "As a fiduciary, we’ve built deep, multigenerational relationships rooted in trust, transparency and sound investment counsel.
"With Mercer Advisors’ comprehensive family office capabilities, we believe we can better preserve, protect and grow our clients’ wealth so future generations can uphold their family legacies,” Meyer added.
Speaking with ThinkAdvisor before the announcement, Mercer Advisors' CEO, Dave Welling, said the 100-firm milestone demonstrates that Mercer’s fiduciary service model and employee ownership structure backed by strategic investors are attractive for advisor teams looking for a new home.
At the same time, Welling emphasized, inorganic growth is only a part of what he called Mercer’s magic formula.
“You’ve got to build a great business first before the inorganic strategy makes sense,” Welling said. “Mercer had done that when I arrived here back in 2017.
"When the acquisition strategy started, we were already running over 20 offices across the U.S. with over $8 billion in assets under management — based on a fully integrated client experience centered around financial planning, estate and tax,” he explained.
Now, Mercer boasts some 1,270 employees and supports $71 billion in client assets. Key to Mercer’s early growth, Welling said, was bringing together these capabilities under one roof while also balancing centralizing capabilities for scale and “keeping things local” to ensure that clients received a personal touch and advisors felt empowered to run their practices.
“We’ve always led with the idea that we are an integrator, not an aggregator. That’s still at the core of what we do today,” Welling said. “Each new partner becomes a co-architect in crafting what our clients deserve and what the market sorely lacks — an elevated client experience where we strive to build a family office around every client we serve.”
Another key to Mercer’s success, Welling said, has been sourcing high-caliber executives with the necessary experience to pilot the RIA firm through evolving times for wealth management. This includes the 2022 hiring as president of Daniel Gourvitch, a former BlackRock and Goldman Sachs executive who started his financial services career at McKinsey & Co.
More recently, the firm hired its first client development chief in Alisa Maute, formerly of LPL Financial. It also named two new principals of M&A partner development in Ted Motheral, a longtime attorney, and Martine Lellis, who had been the firm's chief talent officer since 2020.
“This is a fantastic team that is going to help us continue to make acquisitions at the right pace and in the right way,” Welling said. “We have to get this right, because when a firm like Tufton or Lewis come into the fold, this is their life's work that they’re putting in our hands — and the promises they’ve made to their clients. We take that responsibility very seriously.”
Pictured: Dave Welling
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