Carson has a kit for indies

High-profile adviser Ron Carson, whose wealth management firm already manages $3.2 billion in assets, is expanding his firm’s reach to work with outside financial advisers.

A new venture dubbed Carson Institutional Advisory will give outside advisers access to Carson Wealth Management Group’s proprietary research and investment strategies, valuations for succession planning, a co-branded iPad application and other services.

The cost to advisers of the new venture will undercut money management programs many of them now use, Mr. Carson claims.

“Most of the advisers we are going to work with have what we call below-the-line costs,” he said, citing mutual fund wrap accounts that can charge 130 basis points. The new venture’s cost, including its turnkey asset management program will be 45 basis points to 65 basis points, he said.

PRICED TO COMPETE

“That’s 100 basis points we can save, on average, for most advisers,” he said. “We are taking some of the excess cost out [of their business] and delivering a tremendous amount of value.”

“Who is the net loser in this?” he asked. “The mutual fund complexes and the more expensive [exchange-traded funds]. We are priced at a point where we are competitive if you just looked at us as a TAMP. But a TAMP stops at managing the assets” and doesn’t include such services as an iPad application, he said.

“This is very interesting,” said Stephen Winks, an industry consultant. Brokerage firms, in general, are not geared toward building client-specific portfolios but are driven by selling products.

“The missing link is the intellectual capability and capital of advisers constructing personalized portfolios” for consumers, he said. “It appears that Ron is moving the industry towards personalized portfolio construction, which I applaud.”

Even though working with clients to construct such portfolios is “a pretty daunting task,” Mr. Winks said, it is the future of the financial advice industry.

The new program has been tested by a couple of advisers and will be introduced formally in October during a meeting of the Peak Advisor Alliance, a coaching and practice management business for advisers that Mr. Carson also manages. Over the past five years, Barron’s has ranked him one of the nation’s top 10 financial advisers.

One feature of the new venture will be a succession plan, something the typical adviser has yet to formalize for his or her practice.

“CIA will be your succession plan,” he said. “If you want to formally do a succession plan, I’ll help create more value in your business, and when you’re ready, I’ll even buy your business from you if you want.”

The new enterprise comes on the heels of Mr. Carson’s efforts in the spring to band together with a group of registered investment advisers to inform other advisers of options for leaving other than joining a roll-up firm or consolidator. That effort, the Alliance for RIAs, bills itself as a “think tank” that assists advisers who want to build their practices’ value.

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