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Rick Kent
Courtesy of Advantage Monetary Advisors
Agency: Advantage Monetary Advisors
Title: Rick Kent
Location: Alpharetta, GA
Staff Custodied Belongings: $7.9 billion
Forbes Rankings: America’s High RIA Companies, America’s High Wealth Advisors, Greatest-In-State Wealth Advisors
Background: Rick Kent grew up in Southern Indiana, proper throughout the river from Louisville, Kentucky. After attending Indiana College Southeast, he turned an entrepreneur, utilizing his proclivity for gross sales and other people abilities to begin a number of corporations. It wasn’t till his mid-40s that he dived into the world of monetary providers and acquired licensed in 1998. “I knew I needed to grow to be a monetary advisor so I went to quite a lot of conferences, the place it appeared like most profitable ones had a distinct segment specialty or market,” remembers Kent. Whereas working practically ten years at Securities America, he turned an skilled on advantages packages. “Most individuals didn’t perceive retirement plans or pensions—I noticed this as my alternative to assist shoppers,” he says. By 2007, Kent arrange his personal RIA, finally bringing it below the umbrella of LPL Monetary in 2010. He made 9 complete acquisitions to construct his enterprise between 2012 to 2020, then after bringing in new companions in 2021, the agency has since ramped up M&A offers once more. It made practically 20 offers within the final two years and now has 225 staff.
Aggressive Edge: Kent describes increase his enterprise over time by specializing in area of interest markets and accumulating totally different areas of experience one after the other when making acquisitions. For instance, he would purchase companies with totally different areas of focus, akin to retirement planning or groups who predominantly labored with widows or enterprise homeowners. “Over time, that area of interest advertising actually labored—it’s a giant a part of our technique and immediately our consumer base is everywhere in the map,” says Kent. “It’s essential to run a enterprise with deep relationships—we do that to counterpoint the lives of these we serve, and we imagine that begins with our workforce.”
Funding Philosophy/Technique: “We construct mannequin portfolios with totally different sleeves, with every part from a core fairness and glued earnings portfolio to extra opportunistic fairness positions and better yielding mounted earnings,” says Kent. “This enables for a lot of alternatives to customise every consumer’s portfolio.” He additionally factors out that it’s essential to be proactive about getting common updates out to shoppers: One such technique of doing so is the workforce’s podcast, Advantage Market Replace, which talks about market subjects just like the Federal Reserve at the least as soon as a month. “When uncertainty goes up, shoppers love listening to from us—it’s the proper time to speak extra as a result of they’ve quite a lot of questions and need to know we’re up to the mark,” he says. “An advisor may be most precious throughout turbulent occasions.”
Funding Outlook: Kent and his workforce predict market volatility to proceed, advising that shoppers and advisors ought to get used to this being “the brand new regular.” As Advantage President Kay Lynn Mayhue describes, “we don’t see issues rapidly altering a method or one other in relation to rates of interest.” The workforce as a substitute focuses on attempting to maintain shoppers targeted on their long run monetary plan: “relationships are on the core of what we do—our workforce could be very heavy on contact with shoppers.”
Classes Discovered: “A whole lot of advisors rising their enterprise don’t essentially need to make investments again into human capital and find yourself attempting to do an excessive amount of themselves,” says Kent. He remembers equally fighting that within the early days of operating his personal unbiased agency, however as soon as he was capable of efficiently delegate, that allowed him to spend much more time truly sitting down with shoppers. “It’s an amazing enterprise but it surely’s going to take a workforce effort—it is advisable to ask your self robust questions on priorities and who you want.”
Greatest Recommendation: “I discover myself telling shoppers on a regular basis, throughout good markets everyone seems to be pleased, however in robust markets there’ll at all times be quite a lot of questions,” says Kent. “Keep on with your long-term objectives and bear in mind the methods we have now already put in place to realize them.” He likes to make use of historic and different market knowledge to remind shoppers that quick time period fluctuations received’t affect their portfolios, particularly when these have been already constructed to climate storms within the first place. Kent makes use of an analogy to explain his interactions with shoppers in these situations: “Some individuals who don’t fly rather a lot get nervous in turbulence and really feel uncomfortable, however whenever you have a look at the flight attendant, they’re completely calm, no massive deal,” he says. “It’s the identical factor when an advisor talks to their shoppers—I inform them why they shouldn’t be anxious.”
Favourite Passion: Kent is a giant fan of boats: Yearly, he and a gaggle of pals hire a sailboat within the Caribbean and discover totally different islands. He additionally owns an influence boat down in Florida which he likes to take for excursions across the South.
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