The private wealth team at Coho Partners, a primarily institutional registered investment advisor with $7 billion in assets under management, is spinning out to form Aurdan Capital Management in Berwyn, Pa.

Aurdan, which received RIA approval from the SEC late last month, will begin its independence with roughly 105 client relationships and $425 million in assets under management, said founding partners Eric Hildenbrand, CFA, and Steven Mills, JD, CFIP.

Hildenbrand and Mills joined Coho’s private wealth group in 2016 and 2021, respectively, after having initially met when they both worked at Haverford Financial Services. Their two team members, both of whom are also transitioning from Coho to Aurdan, are Sam McCaffrey, investment analyst, and Roseann Dittmar, partner, client relations.

Hildenbrand and Mills said that, over time, the needs of Coho’s institutional and individual clients diverged enough that Coho was receptive to the idea of separating the two businesses.

“It worked well for many, many years, but we found over the last few that the needs of our business have evolved in a different direction,” Hildenbrand said. “It’s been hard for us to have the autonomy to make decisions like resourcing, technology and personnel. The institutional side doesn’t need those bells and whistles.”

Beginning about a year ago, the Aurdan co-founders began collaborating with Coho to deliver the best outcome for the client while buying out the business without any other financial partner, they said.

First up was modernizing the client experience with Orion Advisor Solutions reporting software and expanding the investment offerings, although the Coho strategy will remain an important anchor in their clients’ portfolios.

“First and foremost, we’re fiduciaries, so when we design a portfolio for our clients, we take them through a process. And we start with financial planning,” Mills said. “From there we craft the portfolio.”

Since being notified of the change, Aurdan’s clients having been asking questions they never raised when they saw the private wealth group as just an investment manager, he said.

“We’re having a lot more questions around balance sheet, cash flow. Do they have enough to retire? Can we help with decumulation versus accumulation,” Hildenbrand added. “We love this part of the conversation and feel very confident in it. But we do want to have one of our first hires be a fulltime financial planner to continue to build out that part of the business.”

Coho was founded as an institutional RIA in 1999 by Peter Thompson. In 2004, he hired Rick Wayne from PNC Advisors, who brought with him a group of individual clients, Hildenbrand said, and from there the private wealth group was born.

“Peter wanted to focus on a stock strategy and sell that to the big pension plans, institutions, consultants, etcetera,” he said. “But the philosophy and the strategy resonated really well with high-net-worth investors.”

That strategy focused on downside protection—not without upside reward, but tilting toward protection. So much so, Hildenbrand said, that the Coho core portfolio was down only 2% in 2022.

“It’s also largely dividend paying,” Mills added, “which again resonates really well with the type of clients that are looking for private wealth management.”

Even their firm name represents their mission of protecting assets while growing them, they said. Both lost their mothers to cancer, and Aurdan is a portmanteau of their mothers’ names.

“Number one, we are honoring our mothers,” Hildenbrand said. “But really what we’re trying to do is be good stewards of capital for a family and help them with their needs now as well as with the generational transfer of wealth.”

Aurdan’s future clients will have between $1 million and $15 million in assets. In addition, since many of their clients are business owners, Mills and Hildenbrand said they will be adding 401(k) services to their offerings.