Signature Estate & Investment Advisors (SEIA) wants to be a $50 billion registered investment advisor within the next five years and is banking that a recent equity investment from Reverence Capital Partners will help them get there.

Los Angeles-based SEIA has been an advisor-driven business for the past 25 years, quickly amassing more than $16 billion in assets under management. However, the company wants to double those assets by 2027. To reach that level, the firm sought out partners it could work with to bring more services and investment products to its client base.

“I felt that to compete effectively and to benefit our clients, we needed to [seek out an equity partner],” SEIA President and CEO Brian Holmes said.

He believes that focusing his firm’s resources on high-net-worth clients is the key to additional growth. On Wednesday, the firm announced that New York-based Reverence would be making an undisclosed investment and acquiring a majority stake in SEIA. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Milton Berlinski, managing partner and founder at Reverence, said his firm will provide expertise and strategic guidance at the board level, capital for growth, transactional experience to help SEIA execute a successful M& A strategy, and additional resources to help create additional best practices procedures.

“We have been attracted to the RIA industry for quite some time,” he said. “SEIA has been one of the fastest growing RIAs in the space.”

He added that Reverence was particularly attracted to SEIA because of its strong growth. 

Despite Reverence obtaining a majority stake in SEIA, Holmes will continue to run the company and advisors will maintain ownership of their products. Reverence will, however, work closely with SEIA management so it can share its expertise in the short term, Berlinski said.

“We will help them to do the things that they haven’t yet done,” Berlinski said. “We will provide strategic advice at the board level, help institutionalize certain core functionalities and assist in building out their M& A and integration team so they can do it all in-house over time.”

The deal might not have occurred were it not for Advisor Group, which had a long-standing relationship with SEIA and Holmes since 2018, when the Phoenix-based Advisor Group acquired SEIA’s former broker-dealer, Signator Investors. A year ago, Jamie Price, CEO at Advisor Group, saw the tremendous growth of SEIA in a short period and identified the opportunity for expansion. He suggested that Holmes seek out an equity partner.

“We approached them about a year ago to help them explore options to grow organically and inorganically,” Price said.

Advisor Group will become an investor in SEIA upon the closing of the deal and provide transitional resources as well as M&A resources as those become necessary. In addition, Advisor Group will continue to work with SEIA as it has over the past several years.

Holmes said the investments from Reverence and Advisor Group will allow his firm to expand not only in investments, but geographically. SEIA has eyes on opening more offices in California and beyond, including Texas and New York, he said.

As for investments, Holmes has a goal to break into the family office space, which has been seeing significantly more interest in the past few years. 

“It is time for us to get involved in a family office setting,” he said. 

He said he wants to provide more investable products for high net-worth clients, institutional pricing, alternative investments, and elevated client-facing technology.

To accommodate growth, Holmes said his firm will bring in new RIAs who can operate on SEIA’s new enhanced platform. He did not say how many he wants to bring in. 

Price and Berlinski expressed confidence in Holmes’ ability to expand his platform into the high-net-worth space and grow his business on multiple fronts. Berlinski said that so long as Holmes stays true to what helped generate his growth initially, he will be successful.

“If you do well by your clients all the rest will fall into place,” he said. “If they continue to do what they do really well and serve their clients, we are highly confident this will be a mutually successful partnership.”