Six Merrill Lynch Wealth Management advisors from three Birmingham, Ala., offices have broken away to form Fairvoy Private Wealth, a fee-based registered investment advisor that expects to corral $550 million in assets under management within the next four months.

The new RIA, also in Birmingham, is led by Stephen Davis, formerly a managing director, ChFC and CFP at Merrill’s Davis, Word & Taylor Wealth Management Group; Ashley Davis, a senior vice president, CPA and chartered retirement planning counselor at the same firm; and Neal Carroll, a CFP, senior vice president, senior financial advisor and retirement accredited financial advisor at Merrill’s Osborne & Associates team. Stephen and Ashley Davis are married to each other.

Stephen Davis this year was named to Forbes’s “Best-in-State Wealth Advisors” list, and Carroll’s team made the “Best-in-State Wealth Management Teams” list. Their two former firms managed about $1.4 billion in AUM combined.

At Fairvoy, the three are founding partners and senior private wealth advisors, while Stephen Davis is also managing partner, Ashley Davis is chief financial officer, and Carroll is chief operating officer.

Carroll and Stephen Davis met 20 years ago, when Carroll joined the Merrill firm Davis worked at then and the two sat across from each other.

“We had the same mentor in the business, we did some seminars together, and before we even started Fairvoy, we still had a pool of clients we serviced together,” Carroll said. “He’s been a neighbor of mine, and a close friend. Both he and Ashley.”  

Also hailing from the Davises’ Merrill office are H. Alan Word, who was a senior vice president and senior financial advisor there and now is director, founder and senior private wealth advisor at Fairvoy, and Alma Maric, who was a wealth management client associate and now is a vice president, co-founder and associate wealth advisor.

And finally, Claudia Johnston joins from Merrill’s The RPM Group, where she was a vice president and wealth management specialist. She now is a vice president, co-founder and private wealth advisor at Fairvoy.

The decision to launch their own firm was made easier in recent years as clients have become increasingly accepting of technology-enabled relationships with advisors—virtual meetings, docu-signing and other conveniences that accelerated during the pandemic cleared a path of possibility, Carroll said.

“It was something that we had talked about for some time, and had kicked around the idea for quite a few years. We really got serious talking about it soon after Covid,” he said. “We knew we wanted to work together, and it was just a question of did we come together as a bigger group in the Merrill Lynch setting, or do we explore other options?”

They already knew they wanted to go independent, he said, so exploring other options was the ticket, and it “has been the best decision we’ve made.”

“If you look at the growth rates of the RIA space versus the wirehouse space, that seems to be where a lot of growth is coming from,” he said. “That’s where the future of the business is heading, and we decided to take a leap of faith.”

To assist in the transition to independence, the new firm has partnered with Dynasty Financial Partners for back-end support, client-facing technology and investment capabilities.

According to Carroll, about two-thirds of Fairvoy’s initial AUM will come from clients from the Davises’ former Merrill office and about one-third from his. “It's been overwhelming, the response we've gotten from clients. It's just truly great to hear the excitement that they have for our company and the future that we have laid out here,” he said. “It’s been beyond our expectations. We're just so grateful to have the clients that we have."

Carroll said the transition marks not just a change in employment, but a change in focus for the advisors as they’ve gone fee-only, dropped their Series 7 licenses and are not looking back.

“It will truly align us with our clients, and in their best interests,” he said. “We will have the ability to explore investment options from across the gamut of sources, and there are unlimited resources in that space.”

Fidelity will be Fairvoy’s custodian, Black Diamond will handle performance reporting and eMoney Advisor will assist in the financial planning aspects of the advisors’ work.