Impact Capital, a start-up wealth management division of accounting firm E. Cohen and Company, aims to be all things to all clients seeking sound financial advice.
The new firm is the RIA boutique arm of E. Cohen and will combine wealth management and financial planning offerings with E. Cohen’s tax planning and accounting services. Together, the two firms will offer both new clients and E. Cohen’s established clients a broad array of complementary advisory services at a reduced cost.
“We aim to give you more for less by combining the expertise and breadth of knowledge of the large wealth management firms with the responsive, customized service and competitive fee structure of a boutique organization,” said Daniel Cohen, an E. Cohen CPA and tax manager and a wealth strategist and co-founder of Impact Capital.
Impact's Chief Executive Officer, Bill Bancroft, is a seasoned financial advisor with more than two decades of experience. After graduating from Penn State in 1994 with a B.S. in Finance, Bancroft went to work as a trader and researcher with Colkitt Associates from 1994-2002.
In 2009, he joined Independence by Convergent, a division of Convergent Wealth Advisors in Potomac, Md. Bancroft rose from executive director of the company's division to the position of Chief Operating Officer at Convergent Wealth Advisors in 2016.
The following year, Bancroft joined True Fiduciary in Reston, Va., where he worked as executive director for two years, until 2018.
Bancroft briefly worked as an independent investment advisor, until E. Cohen offered him the position of Chief Executive Officer of its new division, Impact Capital, LLC, just four months later. The division's new head offers cost-savings management of clients' money at reduced risk by relying on exchange-traded funds in place of mutual funds.
The firm likes ETFs for their tax-efficiency, Bancroft said, and helps it avoid the capital gains distributions of actively managed mutual funds.
He asserted that by cutting out the active managers and their associated fees, Impact was also cutting out the middle man.
"Normally, you would pay your advisor 1 percent, then they would recommend a portfolio of mutual funds," Bancroft said. "Those mutual funds carry with them expenses that could be more than 1 percent. Together, you would be paying around 2 percent."