Manhattan Beach, CA (PRWEB) June 13, 2017 -- ECHELON Partners, the leading investment bank for the wealth and investment management industry, announced today the launch of RIA Group LLC, a new entity designed to manage businesses focused specifically on the RIA industry, the first of which is RIA Valuations™.
This new platform will provide a robust product and resource suite that includes 11 distinct, needs-based valuation solution packages, a repository of valuation research reports, and the online tools and technologies for larger institutions to offer these resources to the RIAs they serve.
“As the RIA industry continues to mature, firms need clear, powerful, and easy-to-use valuation services for deal making such as mergers, acquisitions and succession transactions, as well as to manage the eight key drivers of valuation which are essential to maximizing enterprise value and achieving the vision of growth leading entrepreneurs have in this industry,” said Dan Seivert, CEO of ECHELON Partners. “Our 20+ years of experience in providing valuation solutions for thousands of advisors has provided us with powerful insights and essential expertise. The establishment of this new company and Valuations platform will yield even more industry-specific focus, bringing forth new solutions to the wealth managers and their affiliated institutions that count on us as the industry’s go-to resource for all things valuation.”
The flexibility of the RIA business model yields a high degree of variability in the types of businesses financial services entrepreneurs create. RIAs, therefore, can differ greatly based on revenue quality, service lines offered, and/or the use of employee versus independent contractor arrangements. With an increasing need for clear and accurate valuations for succession transactions and equity sharing programs, RIAs continue to struggle with the industry’s folkloric, one-metric valuation paradigm of a simple multiple of revenue.
To address these needs and challenges, RIA Valuations™ developed 11 need-based solution packages to help wealth managers with selling, merging, equity sharing, continuity, succession, financing and more. Features of these packages include the following:
• A Comprehensive Valuation Report – providing industry-leading empirics, rigor, and user friendliness
• A Valuation Scorecard™ - a proprietary solution providing detailed analysis and ranking around the eight most important valuation drivers
• An Historic Pro-Forma Financial Analysis – outlining key financial ratios and benchmarking metrics
• A Financial Forecast – employing a control panel to facilitate what-if analysis for evaluation of various scenarios
• An Equity Glide Path™ - outlining internal buying and selling and the value held by each owner in the capital table
• Legal Documentation Templates –easy to use instructions necessary for purchase agreements, buy/sell provisions, and protective covenants
• Post-Valuation Improvement Opportunities – providing options and recommendations to enhance firm value
Additionally, RIA Valuations™ provides valuation-centric practice management resources via a new industry website (http://www.RIA-Valuations.com) offering proprietary research, quarterly valuation publications, as well as online valuation calculators. All of these resources draw upon the insights of the RIA Valuations™ team from conducting thousands of valuations in a diversity of situations for a wide variety of firms.
“Entrepreneurial RIAs demand clear and accurate valuation solutions given the increased competitiveness in our industry,” said Seivert. “Regardless of the reason for the valuation, we have developed a customer experience that is educational and collaborative as our clients follow along with our work flow tool sharing in the discovery of the variables that drive the valuation of their most significant asset. Large and regional investment banks and accounting firms typically do not have the RIA-specific valuation databases resulting in non-optimal valuation techniques, such as using public comparables and transactions from adjacent industries that create inaccurate results. As a result, we believe it is critical to obtain valuations from a dedicated, wealth management industry resource that understands the unique variables and market environment RIAs operate in and is why we are very excited to launch this unique resource for the industry.”
As part of the new business launch, the RIA Valuations™ team will be attending and exhibiting at the Pershing INSITE™ conference, June 14-16, 2017, in San Diego. ECHELON Partners’ CEO, Dan Seivert, will be presenting “Is M&A a Healthy Choice for Your Advisory Firm?” workshop, June 14, 2017, at 11 am at INSITE™.
To learn more about ECHELON Partners’ RIA Valuations™, visit http://www.RIA-Valuations.com. To learn more about ECHELON Partners’ total platform approach, visit http://www.echelon-partners.com.
About ECHELON Partners
Founded over 15 years ago, ECHELON Partners http://www.echelon-partners.com combines the high quality expected of a large investment bank with the high-touch expected of a personal boutique. ECHELON Partners is transforming succession planning and M&A for the wealth management industry through a total platform approach serving large producers, offices, Super OSJs and Enterprises and RIA firms through all their lifecycles. Our services include investment banking, management consulting, valuation and board advisory. Our resources include research reports, legal contracts, databases and financial models. Our team consists of credentialed and experienced professionals.
We believe the keys to successfully serving clients are a wealth and investment industry focus, a comprehensive approach, execution experience and excellence, recognition by industry leaders and an affinity toward entrepreneurship. ECHELON Partners is committed to bringing all of these qualities to every client assignment.
Timothy Welsh, [email protected], 415-847-4874, [email protected]
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