Two Ohio financial advisory giants are joining forces to create a $10 billion powerhouse in the Buckeye State.

Akron-based registered investment advisor Sequoia Financial Group has agreed to acquire Mayfield Heights-based NCA Financial Planners in a deal set to close by the last day of the year. Sequoia, which began acquiring firms in 2009, currently has $8 billion in assets under management.

NCA, which had grown organically up to now, had $1.7 billion in assets in September, the companies said in the press release announcing the deal.

The acquisition follows Sequoia’s purchase of Columbus, Ohio-based Wealthstone Advisors, a deal announced in April. Wealthstone had $1.4 billion in assets.

When Sequoia and NCA merge, the new entity will have145 employees, including the 27 currently working for NCA. Kevin Myeroff, the CEO of NCA, will become the firm’s senior strategic advisor.

Myeroff said he had known Sequoia and its CEO, Thomas Haught, for 20 years and they were friendly competitors. “When we started our business, we really wanted to be one of the firms on the tip of the spear,” Myeroff said. “Not just good, but the best. And I said, ‘Jeez. We’ve got to get to a billion dollars to have the scale to deliver to our clients what we need to deliver. And then it became $2 billion, which is really hard to do when you’re only [growing] organically like us. Now it’s $10 billion. … And I don’t want to wait 10 years to get there.”

Myeroff said NCA does holistic financial planning for “millionaire next door” Midwestern type clients, who started modestly, bought houses and saved. The firm is a Finra member affiliated with broker-dealer Royal Alliance.

Haught said his firm has focused on entrepreneurs. “Our early roots were with privately held businesses that had planning issues that related to not only their liquid assets but also their illiquid assets … the value of their equity and their real estate that was tied in the business. We learned a lot about estate planning and long-range planning based on those assets not being short-dated assets but being long-dated assets.”

Haught says clients want a broader solution set. “Planning is broader and broader each year. When Kevin and I started many years ago it was predominantly investment work, and it’s become financial planning and estate planning, college planning and helping people decide whether they should buy or lease a car and helping people to think about states of residency and tax planning.” He says the merger gives the company more scale to reinvest in the business and offer more services.

Myeroff said smaller firms are limited in what they can do—that they can only hire so many people, who end up doing work they don’t have time for.

“My senior leadership teams came to me and said, ‘Listen, I really want to be a financial advisor with our clients. But now I have to do marketing. I have to do meeting planning. I have to do some tax preparation. And so with the 30 people we have, we’re not big enough to have departments. We do have a full-time marketing person, but we don’t have a chief marketing officer. The vision still has to be directed from the leadership team. And so our planners are getting overwhelmed. Tired. And they love this idea of going somewhere where they literally have a marketing team,” he said.

Haught said Sequoia started in 1991 but started growing through mergers in its third decade because it had developed talent in the first 20 years that was ready to take on more responsibilities. It’s done eight total transactions since 2009, he said.

The firm now has offices in Michigan, Florida and South Carolina.

Kudu Investment Management made an equity investment in Sequoia in 2020 to help the RIA firm with its expansion plans. Haught said that Kudu is backed by White Mountains Insurance Group and doesn’t operate like a private equity firm. “It’s more long-dated insurance capital,” he said.