Elevation Level, an funding agency launched final yr that oversees $3.4 billion in consumer property, has taken a minority stake in newly established registered funding advisor Fortage Capital Advisors in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Elevation Level CEO Jim Dickson, who based and led Sanctuary Wealth till 2023, stated his relationship with Fortage founder and managing accomplice Andrew Moss spurred his curiosity in partnering and made it a simple selection.
“I’ve all the time recognized and appreciated the standard of his apply,” stated Dickson, who labored for years with Moss at Merrill. “He has been a multi-million-dollar producer for a lot of, a few years …. his crew has been collectively for 15 to twenty years, so their relationships with their shoppers are a number of the finest we’ve ever seen.”
Earlier than launching Fortage, Moss had been with Transcend Capital Advisors for 5 years, after about 25 years at Merrill. He left Merrill for Transcend in 2020 with companions Matthew Harbarcuk and Carrie Angott, now with him at Fortage as director and consumer service affiliate, respectively.
“We have been drawn to Elevation Level’s partnership mannequin for its progressive instruments, expertise, and infrastructure, which can assist us optimize our service providing and amplify enterprise development,” Moss stated in a press release.
Moss will be a part of Elevation Level’s Type ADV and is within the strategy of transferring over shoppers. The companies didn’t present an actual consumer asset determine for Fortage’s ebook of enterprise.
The stake comes after Elevation Level made two investments earlier this yr. One was a 30% stake in Triton Wealth, an Aitkin, Minn.-based registered funding advisor with over $225 million in property below administration, and one other was an funding in Stonebrook Non-public, a Northville, Mich.-based agency with over $750 million in AUM.
Dickson stated Elevation Level normally takes a 20% to 40% stake in companies, with some becoming a member of its Type ADV, and others remaining on their very own. He stated Elevation Level sits down with a possible accomplice and identifies “one or two issues we will do with them to actually assist them develop.”
In Fortage’s case, a type of development areas was offering the RIA with Elevation Level’s proprietary personal market funding choices.
“We’ve created fairly a platform that’s substantial,” Dickson stated. “For [Moss], it was not solely with the ability to take the again and the center workplace off of his plate, but in addition what we may do to assist him provide extra for his shoppers.”
Dickson stated Elevation Level has just lately prioritized working with shoppers by tax season, however now, the market ought to anticipate a “common cadence by the yr” of funding bulletins.
The CEO stated “two particular ecosystems” are fascinated with getting a minority stake from Elevation Level: giant breakaway wirehouse groups and RIAs with consumer property of about $750 to $1 billion who wish to develop.
Relating to the wirehouse breakaways, these advisors are “annoyed with the paperwork and the restrictedness of being in a wirehouse,” Dickson stated. “They’re taking a look at some great benefits of the economics, however they’re additionally saying, ‘Hey, look, I’m undecided we need to construct this on our personal, so let’s search for a accomplice that may assist us stake it.’”
On the RIA aspect, Dickson stated some bigger advisories are struggling to “get to the subsequent stage.”
“They’re saying, ‘Look, we all know how you can develop, however we don’t know how you can scale,’” he stated. “‘Are you able to assist us are available and scale this factor from a billion-dollar apply to a $3 billion apply?’ That’s once we can herald our expertise and our experience.”
