When Jodi Amos and Newlin Archinal decided to leave their respective independent registered investment advisor firms to hang out their own state-registered shingle in January 2020, they interviewed Schwab, Fidelity and Raymond James, but chose Commonwealth Financial Network.

“When Newlin and I set out to create 4Rivers Wealth Management, one way we wanted to differentiate was with high-touch service,” Amos said. “The level of service that Commonwealth provides to us is the same level that we provide to our clients.”

In its first two years, the Pittsburgh-based firm has grown to $95 million in assets under management, and the two women partners, who want to grow to $500 million in AUM over the next five years, are using Commonwealth’s headhunting services to hire younger advisors.

“We’d seen enough of what was happening in this space that we knew what we wanted to create,” she added. “Now, instead of having to hire all those specialists with the skills we need, it’s easier to be tuck-in with Commonwealth as a fee-only firm, so they can manage billion dollar  resources for us.”

That’s music to the ears of Commonwealth’s managers, including CEO Wayne Bloom, who outlined the firm’s ambitious goal to reach $1 trillion in AUM in front of nearly 2,000 conference attendees at the firm’s annual conference in San Diego on November 7.  

“Our path to a trillion is all about elevating our ability to help advisors scale their businesses while remaining true to a legacy of high-quality, world-class service for the industry’s most accomplished advisor community,” Bloom said.

The strategy appears to be paying off for Commonwealth, a privately held firm with headquarters in Waltham, Mass., and San Diego. The firm created its RIA platform for reps who wanted to be dually registered in 2013 and launched a full-service RIA offering for fee-only advisors in 2018.

Commonwealth, which works with a total of 2,000 independent advisors overseeing $272.9 billion in assets, has grown its fee-only assets to $7.6 billion.

“We’ve been growing on the fee-only side for about five to six years, 35% to 40% annually,” said Brian Lampron, vice president of RIA Services at Commonwealth.

Most of the advisors coming to Commonwealth are existing dually registered advisors who want to drop their registration with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “Over the past 12 months, the RIA side of our business has really accelerated,” he added.

“You can come to us as you are and evolve as you decide,” said Alex Hansen, senior vice president of RIA Compliance at Commonwealth. “We don’t have to put you in a box to provide services. You can come in as a dually registered advisor or an independent RIA and consume all these services and tap all our teams as you evolve, including our tech stack, practice management, advanced planning and our compliance team.”

“I don’t think it’s typically pure economics that encourages advisors to make the move, although their costs for service are less with us because we reduce their administrative structure costs. Most people do it because they’re trying to get rid of their Finra registration, streamline their practice and that’s why they’re going with a corporate RIA,” Hansen added.

Stacey Hyde, president and founder of Envision Financial Planning, a Commonwealth-affiliated RIA in Memphis, Tenn., who partnered with Commonwealth in 2010 and has $250 million in assets under management, agreed. “There is a good thing about being part of a billion-dollar boutique,” said Hyde, who started with the firm as a registered rep in 2012.

“Commonwealth puts their money where their mouth is. They’ve hired a lot of people. It gives us the scale and experience we need to grow in a boutique environment, which is very important to us,” added Hyde.

While her firm has a chief compliance officer, she said she saves enormous amounts of time and money using Commonwealth’s services, particularly their compliance team, which she said keeps her firm from having to hire an outside compliance firm.

Greg Stalsberg, an advisor with Hibbing, Minn.-based Ryan Financial Group, which has $750 million in AUM and affiliated with Commonwealth in November, said the firm’s services “blew us away. Commonwealth’s advanced planning, strategic retirement solutions, and investment research teams bring a new level of depth to what we can offer,” Stalsberg said.

For CEO Bloom, preserving the firm’s culture of “doing well by doing right” is ever more critical as the firm ramps up to reach $1 trillion in assets, a goal he said is essential for long-term innovation and financial strength.

These core values were equally critical to Ryan Financial as they sought a corporate RIA partner, Stalsberg said.

“Commonwealth shares our same values and vision and cares about our clients and us, not the bottom line. That’s a rare combination in this industry that will help us succeed as we evolve and grow our business,” he said.