Gaining the freedom to focus on clients, not back-office tasks

Matt Kilgroe worked at large investment firms for almost 30 years. He built a strong book of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, including many business owners. Along the way, he assembled a wealth management team of like-minded advisors who acted like entrepreneurs, gaining a reputation for high-touch client service and investment expertise.

That success inspired the team to take their client service and entrepreneurial ambitions even further. So in 2020, they broke away and launched their own RIA, Cyndeo Wealth Partners, In St. Petersburg, Florida. Since then, it's grown into a thriving firm that's regularly mentioned in top RIA lists by publications such as Forbes, Barron's, and USA Today.

One key to Cyndeo's success: Kilgroe and his team knew exactly what they wanted for their clients and themselves. Eventually, the financial services industry caught up, offering a wider range of potential business models that enabled the team to build their ideal firm.

Starting with a clear vision

Cyndeo’s path to independence began with a critical priority: improving client service. As the team built long-term relationships with clients at its previous firm—particularly those in the sports and entertainment fields—they increasingly heard requests for deeper, more personalized financial advice. Kilgroe and the team wanted more flexibility to choose appropriate investment solutions for those clients, and the ability to offer support for a broader range of financial decisions.

Based on that client focus, the advisors in Kilgroe’s team wanted:

• Full control over the investment process so they could act as a true fiduciary.
• The ability to select their own technology platforms and the flexibility to make upgrades as quickly as possible amid rapidly improving software capabilities.
• Responsibility for their own marketing and compliance operations, trusting in their expertise to effectively manage both those efforts.

Kilgroe explored making a move in 2011, but the timing wasn’t right. The financial services industry didn’t yet offer the resources he felt he would need to achieve that vision, so the team chose to remain within a large institution. But in 2019, Kilgroe gave the independent landscape another look and found a dramatic expansion in resources available to advisors.

As he studied the potential business models that those resources could support, he also had an important realization. Based on the team’s goals, Kilgroe sought to create a truly advisor-owned, advisor-led firm operating under its own ADV. Owning the ADV gives firms greater autonomy over key decisions affecting areas such as pricing, service models, compliance, and most importantly, enterprise value.

“Before I began researching options for independence, I had never paid attention to the ADV, but once I began to understand the landscape, I realized how important it is,” says Kilgroe. “When you own your ADV, you can make the decisions you think will really drive the direction of the business.”

Kilgroe didn’t have to look far for a solution to achieve this vision of supported independence: Dynasty Financial Partners, a provider of integrated technology and services to support independent advisors, was also located in St. Petersburg.

Maximizing client-facing time

Dynasty’s model meant the team could own their own ADV while outsourcing tasks that weren’t directly related to working with clients and growing their firm.

Choosing from Dynasty’s flexible menu of support services allowed the Cyndeo team to maintain control of the front office while outsourcing the middle- and back-office tasks that they didn’t want to manage themselves. For example, the team’s previous parent firm had always managed billing and finance, so the team took advantage of Dynasty’s Outsourced Chief Financial Officer services.

“No one we were bringing with us was a CFO, and I didn’t want to be responsible for hiring and managing that role,” says Kilgroe.

Outsourcing administrative and finance roles would allow the team to remain deeply involved in their preferred work of advising clients. To help with that process, Cyndeo curated technology providers for performance reporting and financial planning software that were the best fit for a firm of their size and their client profile, and that would support any investments they selected. “Being a fiduciary and managing our own investments means we went from being sellers of investment solutions to buyers of the right investment solutions for our clients,” says Kilgroe.

The team took a similarly thoughtful approach to choosing a custody provider. They evaluated three options, ultimately choosing Fidelity as the best operational and cultural fit. Fidelity offered strong brand name recognition that would appeal to the firm’s client base, but it was a private company—not a large bank that could have exposed the firm to banking sector volatility. The team also appreciated the user-friendly technology that would help the team with day-to-day tasks such as checking client holdings and account activity. “Fidelity’s technology felt more intuitive,” Kilgroe says.

Cyndeo also chose Fidelity to provide trust services to its clients—a key part of the business that had been managed by the team’s previous firm.

Building on a platform for faster growth

The team launched their new firm in 2020. Thanks to the strong relationships they’d built over the years, nearly all of their clients made the move over to Cyndeo. With the right operational support in place, the team was free to focus on serving those clients and attracting new ones. They also had an attractive new environment to recruit more like-minded advisors to the team—bringing in one to three new advisors a year.

Along the way, the team has learned important lessons about what it takes to run an independent advisory firm, such as how growth can affect partners differently. Some were energized to focus on growing the firm’s revenues and client base, while others saw the freedom of independence as an opportunity to manage a smaller book and prioritize flexibility in their work schedules.

Navigating these differences calls for strong alignment within the team on a longer-term vision for what each wants out of the business. Six years into the process, the Cyndeo team has also begun looking ahead to ensure there are strong contingency plans for the continued success of the firm, including succession planning.

Kilgroe notes that an enhanced focus on clients and the freedom to make decisions about how best to operate their own business is precisely what they were seeking from independence—and part of the excitement of running their own RIA. “There are so many options now for creating your own firm,” Kilgroe says. “With so much momentum in that direction, I encourage other advisors to make a move for themselves.”