Cetera Financial Group last week combined two of its previously acquired registered investment advisor firms—Avantax Planning Partners and The Retirement Planning Group—into a single entity called Cetera Planning Partners. The new national RIA holds roughly $19 billion in assets under administration and employs more than 100 advisors who operate as W-2 employees, marking a deliberate shift toward an employee-advisor model within the broker-dealer space.
Jennifer Hanau, president of Cetera's RIA and branches channel, said the merger is part of a broader strategy to offer advisors a structure that emphasizes support, infrastructure and long-term stability. “Cetera Planning Partners is designed as an employee-advisor model,” Hanau said. She added that a small number of independent contractors are in the process of transitioning clients to new wealth advisors, after which all advisors in the firm will be employees. The platform will initially offer custody through Schwab, Pershing and Fidelity.
Cetera has completed roughly 70 transactions since 2020 to expand its RIA capabilities, including this year's acquisitions of Darnall Sikes Wealth Partners, Plains Wealth Management and Matkovic Financial Group. The firm's broader network now encompasses more than 12,000 advisors, $640 billion in assets under administration and $294 billion in assets under management. The consolidation of Avantax and TPRG—both acquired in 2023—is the latest example of broker-dealers building out RIA platforms to capture the model's growth and improve profit margins.
Consultant David DeVoe of DeVoe & Co. noted that independent broker-dealers are sitting on large pools of affiliated RIA assets. “It makes perfect sense to consolidate them and capture the same growth national RIAs are enjoying,” DeVoe said. “Cetera isn't alone here; this is becoming a playbook across the industry.” He pointed to LPL Financial, which has spent nearly $900 million on 77 acquisitions of independent advisors, including its recent purchase of Mariner Advisor Network and a minority investment in Private Advisor Group, a $40 billion RIA and OSJ. Osaic also expanded its RIA footprint last summer with the acquisition of CW Advisors, while Raymond James has offered equity financing and minority investments to independent RIAs.
Despite the trend, DeVoe cautioned that a lingering stigma still deters some fee-only advisors from joining firms tied to transaction-based business models. “Many of these advisors walked away from their Series 7 licenses years ago, and that stigma hasn't fully faded,” he said. Year-to-date, top consolidator firms have accounted for 63% of all RIA M&A deals, according to DeVoe & Co.
Louis Diamond of Diamond Consultants said the fully owned employee-advisor practices within Cetera's ecosystem could support a rising valuation for the firm, which is majority owned by private equity firm Genstar Capital. Genstar first invested in Cetera in 2018 and made a reinvestment in 2023. “From a valuation standpoint, those businesses that are fully owned employee advisors are much more valuable,” Diamond said. He added that Cetera Planning Partners could mirror the strategy of RIA aggregator Focus Financial, which consolidated firms under its Focus Partners Wealth brand. “They're potentially creating optionality for having something very valuable to sell, even outside of Cetera,” Diamond said, noting that a successful RIA unit could be spun off or sold in a future recapitalization or public offering.
Advisors at The Retirement Planning Group will begin using the Cetera Planning Partners brand on July 15, while Avantax Planning Partners is expected to transition later this year. The move underscores how broker-dealers are increasingly adopting an RIA consolidation playbook to capture fee-based growth and enhance their own valuations, even as some advisors remain hesitant to affiliate with firms that have transaction-based roots.
