Advisors Katie Burke and Bridget Grimes launched Equita Financial Network in May for women-led financial planning firms.

Both advisors said they’ve dealt with unhealthy business environments that Grimes defined as an “an all boys network.” She wrote in an Equita blog post that she’s been paid less than male planners, and been told that she was too ambitious or too old and that her efforts to bring women together were a waste of time.

Burke said most women at the firms where she was employed were assistants, so there were no women role models or mentors. That situation is not uncommon in an industry dominated by male advisors.

The two women created Equita Financial Network, a registered investment advisor (RIA) network in California and Pennsylvania for women-led firms, with their practices as its only members upon its debut.

“Unlike most RIA roll-ups, Equita is really a platform to bring together like-minded women financial planners,” explained Burke, founder of Method Financial Planning in Fountainville, Pa. “Equita’s goal is not to just aggregate assets, but rather to help women-led firms be successful through collaboration and sharing of resources.” Grimes is president of San Diego-based Wealth Choice.

Membership in the network includes services that large wirehouses and other RIAs offer. Burke and Grimes have partnered with TD Ameritrade Institutional and Schwab Advisor Services as Equita’s custodians. Other services include compliance support, financial planning software, insurance, tech support and practice management tools. They’ve also partnered with Dimensional Fund Advisors to provide assistance with portfolio management.

The cost of the resources that Equita provides is shared among all members, said Burke. Equita does not currently offer a stake in the network to members or invest in their firms.

“The fees to be on the platform are at cost, so member firms keep what they earn over and above the cost to run their business,” explained Grimes. “However, decisions as to the resources on the platform and contracts with resources are all between Equita and the service provider, so the member firm just pays to plug into the resources.”

The caveat is that women-led firms that become members need to match Grimes and Burke’s financial planning values. To be a part of Equita, advisors must have a Certified Financial Planner designation, act as fiduciaries, be an independent RIA or an investment advisor representative, have a blemish-free firm record and invest for clients in mutual funds, investment-grade bonds and ETFs.

The platform is for women who own their own business or aspire to own their own business, explained Burke and Grimes.

Burke, a mentor for the CFP Board of Standard’s Women’s Initiative (WIN), has found some women are apprehensive about starting their own businesses.  “There’s not the support or resources out there to make them feel like they can do it, and so I’m a huge proponent of ‘you can do this’ and I want to empower these women.”

The platform has attracted interest from sole practitioners, advisors at large wirehouses looking to transition to independence and firms looking for succession planning.

Burke and Grimes said Equita will provide one CFP scholarship a year to new member firms. And they are “in talks” to form virtual study groups to further assist women seeking the CFP designation or guidance on best practices.

“This type of firm did not exist in our industry, and it is a solution that we firmly believe will change the landscape of the financial services industry,” said Burke.

Burke is the founder and president of Method Financial Planning based in Fountainville, Pa., with a satellite office in San Diego, Calif. Her fee-only practice offers financial planning and investment management to busy professionals and young families.

Burke started her finance career at Bernstein Global Wealth Management before moving to Delphi Private Advisors in San Diego. While at Delphi, Burke had her first child and said things changed for her personally and professionally, inspiring her to start her own firm. Method Financial serves young families and busy professionals like herself.

Grimes is also a fee-only advisor and president of San Diego-based Wealth Choice, which has mostly women executives as its clientele.  She, too, worked for larger firms, including Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Hoyle Cohen, before stepping out on her own in 2016. Grimes has been in the industry since the late 1980s and said over time she began to want to run her business in a way where she could do the work that she wanted, on her own terms.

The two women connected in San Diego at a local women’s networking group. In the early days of Wealth Choice, Grimes said, she reached out to Burke to team up for a few client cases. They found that they liked and respected each other, enough to form Equita together to help other women practitioners.

 “We thought, wow, how lucky are we that we know each other,” said Grimes. “There are other women we know who have other small firms out there that could benefit from this collaborative relationship.”