Facet Wealth gets Vanguard's RIA man in Arizona with hopes he can replicate the fund firm's $115-billion success--before burning through Facet's VC backing

It's true... many RIAs have lots of smaller and uneconomical clients. Here's why it's not so easy to just prune-off those clients, however: 1) Sense of Duty and Debt. Many of these clients go back to when the advisor was just getting started. Maybe they aren't impactful to the business now, but they were back then when they helped get the advisor where they are now. 2) Relatives. Many of the small clients are accomodations for larger clients. They're kids, grandkids, sisters, brothers, cousins, and in-laws. An advisor might feel they need to manage these clients as part of the larger main clients. Also, an advisor might want to keep these clients because they represent the next generation that's due to inherit the wealth. If an advisor has a capacity problem and is looking at pruning-off clients, they're growing and likely looking to hire more advisors. Giving a new associate advisor these accounts to start bit keeps the accounts in-house while letting new advisors have a book to start out with. If Facet has found a way to address these two issues and *partner* with growing RIAs to solve their uneconomical clients problems, I think they'd be on to something. -mtb-