In an industry known for the stubbornly elevated average age of advisers, Aly Kassim-Lakha is a fresh face with some fresh ideas for improving the financial advice business.
In April, Kassim-Lakha, 31, founded Aspen Standard Wealth, a holding company it says it wants to be a “permanent home” for other RIAs, as opposed to the shorter ownership windows of private equity funds that fuel most RIA M&A. activity. While many RIA-backed platforms and aggregators will boast similar ambitions, Aspen has received significant funding and approaches the industry through an investment banking lens.
Kassim-Lakha spent six years at investment firm Advent International, where he focused on opportunities in wealth management and saw the trust model as growing and with plenty of room to grow.
“I fell in love with the service model in this industry which is that you're helping people with one of the most important parts of their lives and one of the parts in life that I think is quite complicated,” Kassim-Lakha said. . “It's a huge source of anxiety, it's a huge source of uncertainty, and advisors have the ability to alleviate some of that anxiety.”
However, while he acknowledged that the wealth management business had long-term growth potential, he also saw some of the issues that have plagued the industry recently. One of these is what he calls “short-termism,” with private equity shops buying RIAs to hold them for only three to five years, which he says prevents the development of a long-term strategic vision for these firm.
Another is helping RIAs achieve organic growth in an industry where attracting top talent can be challenging.
Earlier this year, with financial backing from San Francisco-based private equity firm Alpine Investors and holding company Evergreen Group, Kassim-Lakha launched Aspen Strategic Wealth.
The company's first acquisition, announced this November, was San Francisco-based Summitry, a $2.8 billion AUM RIA.
Aspen's internal goal is to grow to a company with $100 billion in AUM by 2030, Kassim-Lakha said, admitting it's an ambitious roadmap.
Aspen's acquisition targets could range from shops with $500 million in AUM to, more ambitiously, those with $10 billion, he said, but ultimately he's looking for RIA directors with a business development orientation, a strong focus on customer service and open to help with challenges such as succession planning and achieving higher organic growth rates.
“These are the things where we can add a lot of value,” Kassim-Lakha said.
Kassim-Lakha also emphasizes Aspen's decentralized model. A partnership with Aspen allows RIAs to maintain their existing branding and service delivery model while helping them outsource compliance, marketing and recruiting to someone with greater resources to handle those tasks.
While this model of decentralized collection is not new, Kassim-Lakha said they have resources that benefit the mission. For example, he mentions that his actor, Alpine Investors, is one of the largest MBA employers in the country, which expands opportunities for the acquisition of new talent.
“What we've heard from the people we've spoken to is that this is a solution that they didn't think was possible – to be able to maintain their brand, to be able to keep the promises they've made to customers theirs. That's different, and that's something we're really excited to bring to market,” he said.