Facet Wealth appoints Mark Tibergien's 'reverse mentor,' Kayla Kennelly, to woo cast-off RIA clients, a boon to a mass affluent strategy that's failed more than once
Kayla Kennelly will play a key role for Anders Jones' startup, which got $33 million of VC money two weeks ago to accelerate its plan to roll-up small, unwanted RIA accounts
7 min read- Facet Wealth hired Kayla Kennelly to acquire cast-off RIA clients for its mass affluent strategy.
- Kennelly's role focuses on sourcing small accounts RIAs want to shed.
- Facet aims to succeed where LPL and others failed in serving mass affluent clients.
- Client acquisition is crucial for Facet's success in the competitive landscape.
Brooke's Note: Sometimes we have to wait six months or a year or five years to write an update about a company. Our People Moves section often accelerates that schedule these days, with this story a case of that. This article about Kayla Kennelly's hire fast-forwarded our Facet Wealth understanding also gave us the chance to address concerns raised about the last Facet article. A 31 year-old CEO raises $33 million for very RIA venture -- buying too-small RIA accounts, then serving them on a Merrill Edge-type platform in Baltimore. We were accused (by a Twitter storm) of inferring that Facet was more innovative than it is. Whether Facet is successful is one thing. But to us, the Baltimore startup sure seems to innovate by constructing a symbiosis with RIAs to solve the ever-challenging client-acquisition problem. Separately, it innovates software and workflows to tackle afresh the equally difficult human bandwidth issue.
Anders Jones must have one of the hottest strategies in the RIA industry, if the $33 million check Warburg Pincus just wrote to Facet Wealth is any indication.
Now, he's just got to execute, and he'll be counting on Pershing Advisor Solutions' Kayla Kennelly to bring her passion to the effort.
The 31-year-old Facet Wealth CEO has named Kennelly one of its new dealmakers-in-chief to source a cut-price pipeline of small accounts that growing RIAs would like to shed--hopefully at a reasonable cost -- and, then, convince them to sign on with Facet CFPs.
He's also banking on succeeding where the capable hands of LPL Financial, with NestWise and Marty Bicknell, with FirstPoint Financial, failed. NestWise was closed in Sept. 2013 owing to internal politics, strategic concerns and a lack of profitability. See: Why exactly LPL Financial nixed NestWise and how OSJs, once again, may be wagging the big dog.
With Warburg's check hot in its pocket, Facet will attempt to roll-up small clients with Learnvest-style financial planning for the mass affluent; a Personal Capital-inspired, planning-centric robo-advisor and way downmarket acquisitions of small-fry accounts most RIAs just don't want.
Solving problems
Client acquisition will be the glue to Jones' model. But it needs to be cheap and easy, if Facet is to avoid the fate of its predecessors. See: Bloomberg warns that BloombergBlack is shutting down.
Kennelly is one of a team of four charged with building those channels.
Her hiring consummates a two-year infatuation with Facet that sees her leave behind her mentor (and reverse protégé), Pershing Advisor Solutions CEO Mark Tibergien.
Bloomberg warns that BloombergBlack is shutting down
"[I] became infatuated with the [Facet] mission. When the opportunity came to take part in it, at a time in my personal life where it made sense, I decided to go for it," Kennelly says.
She spent the best part of seven years at the New Jersey-based Pershing, initially as a corporate trainee and most recently as vice president for business development, before joining Baltimore-based financial planning roll-up Facet in August.
Officially, her new Facet title is director of advisor partnerships, one she shares with ex-Schwab relationship manager Lori Silverthorne. As such, she'll source accounts primed to receive "Dear John" letters from their previous advisors. Wooing these clients and convincing them they're better off with a new brand, at a lower price, under a different service model will fall to the firm's six-strong team of CFPs.
That said, the firm is clear that the handover from the incumbent advisor to a Facet CFP is far from a quick-and-dirty handover, and is instead a personalized process.
Facet's model answers an "enormous problem," Kennelly says. "[It's] the answer to 'I don’t have enough money to have a financial planner' [and] the capacity and growth constraints that keep advisors from finding it economical."
Facet's most basic plan costs $480 per year, and involves advice from a CFP, portfolio design, asset allocation, and lifestyle, cash-flow, and expense planning. Its most costly plan is priced at $5,000 per year, and includes extras like small business, charitable, and estate planning.
Long-term projects
Story Timeline
Part of Kennelly's appeal to Facet is her track record for convincing people that moving down is equivalent to moving up.
At Pershing, she was co-founder of the firm's Connect program, a "reverse-mentoring" scheme where millennials try and teach the firm's old dogs new tricks.
Tibergien, well-known as a mentor for Pershing's young guns, was her first "reverse mentor" student. After her departure, Pershing continues to run Connect. See: The big impression Mark Tibergien and his reverse mentor, Kayla Flaten, 25, made on me over a Manhattan lunch
Why exactly LPL Financial nixed NestWise and how OSJs, once again, may be wagging the big dog
"Things like this are her “passion projects,” and Facet's openness to such ideas was appealing, she explains.
Next up is the creation of a “virtual internship program” for CFPs that fits snugly with the remote-working Facet model, where home-based CFPs mentor trainees. Although unstated, some of these interns may well sign on afterward as telecommuting financial planning reps, with the added bonus of already knowing the Facet ropes.
"We love everything about Kennelly," gushes Jones. “[She's] the whole package, and we look forward to supporting her in other initiatives around mentoring and financial literacy.”
Facet By the Numbers Although Facet does manage money for some of its clients as a free extra, financial planning is the source of its revenues. It employs a fee-based subscription model that bases fees on planning services rendered instead of assets under its management.
|
FirstPoint, much like Facet, was a financial planning-lite software-driven firm where CFPs serviced lower-value clients siphoned off from RIAs. Yet, FirstPoint appears to have failed. Its ADV lists its effective termination date as Mar. 22, 2017.
A co-founder of Barron's-backed, VC-auction event ScratchWorks-- effectively a 'Shark Tank' for RIA software firms -- Bicknell is a noted financial technology investor and no stranger to start-ups.
He's also CEO of Mariner Wealth Advisors, an Overland Park, KS.-based RIA with $25 billion in assets under management.
The Right mix
Like Bicknell, Jones has an investment background. His investments include the 'smokeless tobacco' firm Black Buffalo, 3D printing start-up FactoryFour and the repair firm Fixt.
His first taste of finance was as an intern at T. Rowe Price in 2008.
FirstPoint's failure begs the question whether Bicknell missed a trick, or if there was no hand to play, said Michael Kitces, co-founder of the XY Planning Network, and author of the popular Nerd's Eye View blog, tweeted on Sept. 16.
“What makes Facet worth a $33M round when FirstPoint couldn't get the volume?”
But by working based on a fee-based service model, rather than charging on the amount of money clients have, and focusing on using software to ramp-up advisor productivity, Facet really is different, says Jones, even if it's not the first firm to try to solve the problem of advising on small accounts.
“The FirstPoint model was aimed at the same market, but the approach was quite different," he continues.
"Our average fee is about 75% cheaper than FirstPoint’s was … [and] we didn't take an existing business model and make incremental changes, we started from scratch and changed everything.”
Rely on RIABiz? Tell Google.
Naming us a preferred source puts our reporting first in your Top Stories and AI Overviews. Takes one click, and only you see the difference.