Snowden Lane Partners: A calibrated blend of autonomy and support. 

In this episode, David Armstrong, managing director of editorial and content strategies for the Wealth Management Group at Informa, talks with Alison Burkett, head of enterprise development at Snowden Lane Partners, about the firm’s approach to growth: A carefully calibrated blend of autonomy and support. Targets for acquisition are largely experienced advisors with more sophisticated client relationships, eager to continue their trajectory but at a point where they are too large to run the business independently. Burkett says despite the slowdown in the economy, the pace of partnerships at Snowden Lane will continue, and the firm continues to find some of its best candidates coming out of captured environments at the wirehouses, even as there are increasingly suitable prospects in the independent space.

Specifically, David and Alison discuss:

• Why Snowden Lane’s investment solutions platform is key to attracting advisors with more sophisticated clients and portfolios, giving them access to the same kinds of portfolios, alternatives, and lending options that traditionally were only possible in the larger wirehouses, but without the inherent conflicts in that channel.
• Why a large part of her job is managing for future growth, in that the firm needs to ensure the internal structure and staff are in place to accommodate growth six months before it occurs to avoid logjams that would slow down the trajectory.  
• How the firm still sees the wirehouses as the most fertile ground for bringing in new advisors, and why Snowden Lane executives increasingly eye teams with broader tenures and more complex books of business, and is starting to eye more family office, private banking components to its mix of services. 
• How Snowden Lane’s compensation structure is unique, allowing each team to participate in their own P&L as well as benefit from broader firm equity.
• Why Burkett thinks Snowden Lane is still far away from not being considered a boutique investment advisory firm, and how the firm can likely grow three-fold while keeping the same culture intact. 

Resources:

RIA Edge Podcast

Connect With David Armstrong:

• WealthManagement.com
• LinkedIn: WealthManagment.com
• LinkedIn: David Armstrong 
• Twitter/X: @djamesarmstrong
• LinkedIn: Informa

Connect With Alison Burkett:

• Snowden Lane
• LinkedIn: Alison Burkett 

About Our Guest: 

Alison is a founding team member of Snowden Lane. She ensures that Snowden Lane clients and advisors have a superior experience through consistent service, dynamic technology, and custom investment solutions. As Head of Enterprise Development, she is responsible for the Snowden Lane’s operating platform, human resources, advisor transition, and for driving enterprise innovation.

Alison leads efforts to develop next-generation advisor tools and client service models incorporating leading-edge technology. In addition, she plays a central role in the recruitment and transition of advisory teams to Snowden Lane. She brings extensive experience working with ‘advisors in transition’, integrating custodial technology and service offerings to support their client and business needs in an independent business model. Previously, Alison held business development and client service positions at Clearbrook Global Advisors. She received her BA in Political Science from Princeton University, and studied finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Alison holds Series 7, 66, 24, and 79 registrations. Alison and her husband, Erik, have two children and reside in San Diego, CA.

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This episode of the RIA Edge podcast features a conversation between David Armstrong, managing director of editorial and content strategies for the Wealth Management Group at Informa, and Molly Bennard, the CEO of Connectus Wealth Advisers. Connectus Wealth is a Focus Financial Partners-owned firm, but, unlike others inside that network, it acts more like a collective of smaller RIAs that benefit more from a shared back-office, while still maintaining their client-facing team and unique brands. It’s a model that falls somewhere in between the large aggregators of $1+ billion firms, and smaller acquisitions, which bring advisory practices completely into the fold. Since its founding in 2020, Connectus has grown to include 17 brands in the portfolio with some $12.5 billion in client assets, with the vast majority in the United States.

Specifically, Molly and David discuss:

• Molly’s background in financial services and how she found a home at Focus Financial on the acquisition team before joining Connectus.
• What kind of firms best fit the Connectus business model, and why there are no shortage of them in the marketplace. 
• Why it’s important each Connectus firm keeps its unique branding and client-facing services, like financial planning and portfolio reporting, while sharing back-office functions and, increasingly, shared services like tax planning and accounting.
• The “killer app,” the firm’s home-grown technology, called MyConnectus, which lets advisors and clients share the same platform from different “sides” of the portal (under the advisor’s brand and control) to work together in what Bennard calls a “single point of truth.”

Molly and David also talk about how organic growth is more important for Connectus than growth via acquisition, and how she is hiring talent and organizing the team for that strategy. In addition, they discuss Connectus Wealth’ hands-on, documented approach to onboarding like-minded advisors and firms, and how, given the dynamics of the market, there is no shortage of opportunities in front of them. 

Resources:

RIA Edge Podcast

Connect With David Armstrong:

• WealthManagement.com
• LinkedIn: WealthManagment.com
• LinkedIn: David Armstrong 
• Twitter/X: @djamesarmstrong
• LinkedIn: Informa

Connect With Molly Bennard:

• LinkedIn: Molly Bennard 
• Connectus 

 About Our Guest: 

Before joining Connectus, Molly was a Managing Director at Focus Financial Partners, responsible for leading business development and acquisition activities across both the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States. She also oversaw various international initiatives, including the expansion of Focus’ presence in Australia. Molly also worked closely with multiple Focus partner firms in delivering value-added resources to help execute strategic initiatives that accelerate growth.

Prior to Focus, Molly held a leadership position as the Head of the Strategic Initiatives Group at AXA US, where she led corporate strategy and business development initiatives to drive profitable growth and performance across the organization. She also previously worked within Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking Division, executing M&A, equity and debt transactions within the financial services industry. She began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, providing financial due diligence and other advisory services to private equity and corporate clients within the U.S. and Latin America.

Molly is a CPA and CFA charterholder. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In her free time, Molly enjoys running, scuba diving, international photography and cooking.

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