AssetMark Financial Holdings has reached an agreement with Vestmark to acquire Adhesion Wealth, a leading provider of wealth management technology solutions to RIAs, RIA enterprises and asset managers. Adhesion’s platform enables over 2,800 fee-based advisors across 180 RIAs to deliver better investor outcomes while successfully growing their practices by providing outsourced overlay trading services, client engagement technologies and managed account programs.
“Meeting financial advisors where they are and helping them maximize their potential is a key tenet of AssetMark’s strategy,” said Natalie Wolfsen, CEO of AssetMark.
“As advisors accelerate their growth by increasing the services they provide clients, the addition of Adhesion Wealth further strengthens our ability to serve the rapidly expanding RIA market with an ecosystem of flexible, purpose-built solutions that drive growth, efficiency and scale. We are excited to welcome the Adhesion team and advisors to AssetMark.”
Adhesion is the industry’s second largest model marketplace with over 400 asset managers and strategists. Furthermore, the acquisition delivers value-added services and solutions to AssetMark’s existing offering, including personal and direct indexing, tax transition, portfolio administration, practice analytics and client reporting.
“Since our inception, Adhesion Wealth’s mission has always been to support growth-focused independent advisors with solutions that optimize their clients’ outcomes and their businesses,” said Barrett Ayers, President of Adhesion Wealth.
“Joining AssetMark allows us to continue our mission and impact a broader group of advisors, while also giving us the ability to bolster our service offering and advance our investments in new capabilities to serve our existing advisors.”
Post-close, Adhesion Wealth will continue to offer an open marketplace of modular solutions, which will complement AssetMark’s curated suite of fully bundled capabilities and services designed specifically for RIAs and delivered through AssetMark Institutional. Together, the collective service offerings will be well positioned to deliver solutions for the unique needs of a broader range of advisors, enterprises and asset managers. Both Adhesion and AssetMark will continue to leverage Vestmark’s technology to support their platforms.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2022, subject to customary closing conditions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ECHELON Partners is serving as the advisor to Adhesion Wealth and Vestmark, while Broadhaven Capital Partners, LLC is serving as the advisor to AssetMark.
