DEALQUEST PODCAST – Claire O’Keefe
M&A Talk with Leading RIA Aggregators and Integrators:
Claire O’Keefe of Cerity Partners
Claire O'Keefe with an impressive resume in the wealth management industry is a Partner and the Head of Partner Development in Cerity Partners’ Chicago office; she also serves as a member of the company’s Executive Committee. Prior to her roles at Cerity Partners, Claire held leadership positions at two wealth management firms, where she was responsible for:
Strategic planning
Client Development
Advisory services to affluent individuals, business owners, executives, and nonprofit organizations.
Claire is a strong advocate for philanthropy and prides herself in being involved with many charitable organizations as well as having served on the Henry Viscardi School Board of Trustees.
A PHILOSOPHY TO DOING MERGERS
Cerity Partners views themselves as a partner and not an aggregator thus believing in bringing together like-minded professionals to benefit colleagues and clients. Their vision is to build a global professional services firm for wealth management, both for workplace wealth management for executives and high-net-worth clients.
When considering potential new partners, they look for key areas of alignment, including but not limited to:
Culture
Target clientele
Value proposition
Business model
BUILDING A NATIONAL FOOTPRINT
In order to build a national footprint and brand recognition, the distinction of integrator or aggregator is important in terms of their growth, exit, and funding strategy. Cerity Partners is an integrated firm, meaning they have:
One brand
One technology stack
Equal payroll and benefits for all colleagues
Using this model ensures they are building a national footprint and brand recognition. When they acquire other firms, they integrate technology, data, and operations but do not force or accelerate integration, this in turn prioritizes a consistent colleague and client experience. The consumption of colleagues is a day-one priority, while technology integration can take longer as they make sure to map data and user requirements.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A VISION, MISSION, AND VALUE PROPOSITION
Part of building recognition for your firm is having a mission, a vision, and a value proposition:
Mission: By having a solid mission, your firm and clients are aware of what you can do for their business, and exactly how you will achieve that for them.
Vision: Setting your vision is effectively the blueprint for how you want your firm to approach business and allows for you to set a clear mission.
Value Proposition: This is arguably the most important aspect to set in order to attract clients. Value proposition offers customers what distinguishes you from competitors.
With well over 800 colleagues and serving approximately 15,000 clients across 20 markets, Cerity Partners manages around $65 billion in assets. While these are very impressive numbers, Cerity Partners prioritizes forming relationships with remarkable people over the number of completed deals. This aligns with their mission, vision, and value proposition.
All of this combined allows Cerity Partners to be very attractive to specifically G2 advisors.
FACING A MARKET DOWNTURN
I’ve said many times, the variation of the market is one of the truths in business. We’ve discussed in the past of the importance to not rely solely on the market or the news cycle to dictate your deals. (For more: listen to Episode 220, “The Art of Balancing Market Conditions and Client Motivations in Deals.”)
For Cerity Partners, Claire emphasizes that they are looking for a full merger, and not partial investments. They allow partners to take equity as part of the merger and are flexible on the mix of cash and equity in the deal. Clerity remains transparent with the valuation structure and considers expenses that would be eliminated after the merger to increase the EBITDA and apply a multiple to it. They believe in the growth of opportunity in coming together.
Despite the market downturn, their firm's interest continues to be at an all-time high due to this approach to mergers. Cerity Partners continues to invest in the resources and infrastructure required to optimize their pillars and is quick with experimenting and changing things to continue growth.
For my full discussion with Claire O’Keefe, and more on the topic:
Listen to the Full DealQuest Podcast Episode Here
FOR MORE ON CLAIRE O’KEEFE AND CERITY PARTNERS:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/m-claire-o-keefe-305b539
Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.
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