Service provider, a New York-based funding agency offering progress capital and different help to impartial monetary providers corporations, has taken a minority stake in a full-service CPA partly to supply its registered funding advisor community further tax, accounting and auditing capabilities.
Service provider, which has over 100 accomplice corporations, has invested in Venning Advisors, a full-service CPA with over 150 workers throughout 15 U.S. places of work. The corporations didn’t disclose the quantity of the funding.
Venning, headquartered in Agawam, Mass., is the second full-service CPA Service provider has invested in; it took a minority stake in Manning Silverman & Firm within the first quarter of 2024. Tim Bello, co-founder and managing accomplice at Service provider, mentioned the agency went on a “listening tour” within the monetary providers house about 5 years in the past to collect “granular, detailed” info on the sector.
“We’ve actually gone alongside the strains of, how will we accomplice to drive the total flywheel of providers?” he mentioned. “Not only for the RIA group, however for his or her shoppers by way of the providers they want, equivalent to property planning, belief and accounting providers.”
The transfer is a part of an industry-wide shift of wealth managers providing further providers, together with tax-related funding methods and accounting providers. In January, Carson Group added a tax technique program by buying Taylor Monetary, a wealth administration agency run by a CPA and tax professional. In 2023, Inventive Planning added tax and accounting providers with the acquisition of BerganKDV.
Service provider’s “understanding of the interconnectedness of providers like accounting, tax, and enterprise proprietor advisory help aligns completely with Venning’s experience,” Venning CEO Rishi Gautam mentioned in a press release.
Service provider, for its half, has been investing in RIA-adjacent companies alongside its stakes in RIAs equivalent to Concurrent, Gitterman Wealth Administration and Summit Monetary.
In 2018, the funding agency partnered with AdvisorAssist LLC, a regulatory, compliance and danger administration consulting agency with which it expanded its relationship in 2022. In December of that yr, it took a minority stake in Fin.Hyperlink, previously Succession Hyperlink, a matchmaking service for RIAs seeking to purchase or promote that Service provider helped to rebrand in 2024.
In accordance with Bello, specializing in the broader monetary ecosystem is a part of Service provider’s evolution towards being a “lifecycle” funding accomplice offering long-duration capital by way of fairness and credit score. He mentioned the setup differs from personal fairness investing in that Service provider is dedicated to longer time horizons and offering methods and assets for companies to climate market cycles.
“We are able to react to and evolve alongside the wants of those multi-generational companies,” Bello mentioned.
Bello mentioned Venning is an instance of providing adjoining providers to assist RIAs develop. Based in 1978, Venning grew to become an acquirer itself, including CPAs seeking to arrange a succession plan to ultimately exit their practices by passing it on to others within the community. The agency offers accounting and tax providers to small companies, people, governments, nonprofits and trusts and estates, amongst different entities.
Service provider was impressed by Gautam’s technique to develop the enterprise’s footprint, which can present advisors across the nation with entry to CPA providers.
“Advisor companions had been coming to us asking, ‘What’s a very good belief firm?’ or ‘What’s a very good accounting agency?’” Bello mentioned. “We weren’t going to construct an accounting agency, however we might accomplice with them.”
Bello mentioned Service provider, which has operations in six international locations and $180 billion in property, will proceed to discover alternatives within the CPA house.
In November, Service provider signed its first partnership in Canada, taking a minority stake in SPM Monetary, a London, Ontario-based impartial monetary providers agency with over C$1 billion in property beneath administration.
