Kingswood’s US ambition is to crack the independent broker dealer space before taking on the registered investment adviser (RIA) sector, the wealth firm told International Adviser.
It entered the US market in May 2019 through the acquisition of a 7% stake in RIA consolidator Manhattan Harbor Capital, and completed a second deal in December 2019 with a firm called Chalice.
Gary Wilder, group chief executive at Kingswood, said to IA: “The industry in the US is very different. Clients are very knowledgeable and more active than in the UK.
“You have something like $24trn (£18.4trn, €21.8trn) of assets in the wealth space, which starts in the wire houses and make its way down to the independent broker dealer network, which is where our focus is.
“There are 3,500 independent broker dealer firms, that piece of the wealth sector controls about $4trn of assets. That is our sweet spot.
“Our view is we’d rather be in the broker dealer space and gravitate our assets to RIA assets over time.”
The firm has RIA permissions through Manhattan Harbor.
Pipeline
With two US deals already under its belt, what else does Kingswood have its eye on?
“We’ve already got a significant pipeline of transactions that sit behind the Chalice transaction,” Wilder said.
“We need to go through regulatory approval with Finra [Financial Industry Regulatory Authority], which we are doing at the moment for change of control.
“When we’ve done that, then we will start to roll out our acquisitions.
“It would not surprise me if, by 2023, we will have $25bn to $30bn of assets under management in the US alone.”
