When Questar’s parent company, Allianz Life, last October said it was exiting the advisory business and had reached a deal with Woodbury Financial Services making it the “preferred affiliation partner” in transferring advisors and clients from the two Questar subsidiaries, the Kolbenschlag brothers saw that as the opportunity to strike out on their own by creating Crown Wealth Group and keep doing what they had been doing.
“We’ve always had the same roles where I’ve been personal CFO to our clients and coordinator of all advice across the board that can include taxes, insurance, legal, business consulting and lending,” Nick says. And Tyler is responsible for making sure all of those activities get executed. He handles all of the operations. He’s a real estate agent, so he handles those transactions for clients; he’s an insurance agent, so he handles policy writing for our clients. That has been our one-two punch, and we’ve carried that to Crown.”
Lindgren subsequently came on board as partner and chief investment officer. In addition to handling the firm’s investment management duties, he’s also in charge of getting new and acquired clients.
Until last month, Crown Wealth had 43 clients, 19 of which pay a retainer. The other 24 are fee-only based on their assets under management. The firm’s total assets were $25 million. With Lindgren on board, they set their growth plan in motion.
According to Nick Kolbenschlag, the firm had Lindgren do a search of all independent RIAs over age 60 in the Carolinas and Virginia with $25 million or more in AUM, and then narrow the list to solo advisors either without a staff or only minimal staff who were entirely or almost entirely fee-based. Lindgren contacted them via phone, e-mail and letters. Coppola responded, the parties said they clicked immediately, and the negotiations began.
Coppola’s firm consisted of himself and his wife, who handled the administrative chores. He jokes his wife kind of egged him on to make a deal with Crown Wealth so that she could be done with the admin tasks and could devote more time to her job as a realtor.
Coppola’s client base is primarily individuals and families in the Carolinas, New Jersey, New York, California, Texas and Europe. Several are retired but most aren’t, and several are in the high-net-worth category. His practice has roughly $25 million in assets, and he will remain in Chapel Hill.
Nick Kolbenschlag says the merge-then-sell deal that Crown Wealth made with Coppola is part of a three-prong growth strategy that entails other similar deals with older advisors, coupled with organic growth through referrals and bringing in young advisors from established firms who want to work in a smaller and younger environment. But he adds that all advisors who join Crown Wealth need to embrace their personal CFO approach.
“They have to be good fits and have clients who are receptive to what we do,” he says.