CAPTRUST Tops $1T in Total Assets

CAPTRUST Financial Advisors has topped $1 trillion in total assets as of June 30 between qualified retirement plan and individual wealth clients, the firm announced Tuesday.

The $1 trillion mark shows a roughly 17% increase from the end of 2023, when the firm reported $852 billion in assets. It also comes after many years of acquisitions, most recently in wealth management, but also including retirement plan advisories; just last year, CAPTRUST brought on nine firms representing $14.7 billion in assets.

While CAPTRUST is a household name among registered independent advisories today, that path was not something Co-Founder and CEO Fielding Miller would have predicted when he and colleagues from broker Interstate/Johnson Lane started the firm in 1997 with $4 million in client assets and 12 staffers.

Fielding Miller

“I certainly didn’t see this coming 27 years ago,” Miller says of the milestone. “It is an incredible accomplishment, and we are very humbled, as well as excited, by it.”

CAPTRUST now has 1,600 people in more than 90 locations across the U.S. Some of that growth has been fueled by backers GTCR, which invested in the firm in 2020, and Carlyle Group, which took a minority stake in 2023.

A Retirement Plan

The firm’s success, Miller says, is also rooted in its early mover position in advising plan sponsors on their retirement plans—an industry that, at the time, was just being formed.

“When we started, there really wasn’t the retirement advisement industry,” he says. “Now a big swath of these assets are in qualified plans, and that has been very exciting; because we were early to the industry, we have been able to stay ahead of others … and been able to continue with that business and accelerate.”

Miller says that, during those earlier years, the focus was on setting up plans and then engaging employees to enroll and save. Later, retirement advice became crucial, and more recently, the company has pushed into holistic financial wellness for participants.

CAPTRUST, he says, has “invested a lot” into meeting those shifting needs, with the latest iteration a rebranding of its participant engagement platform to CAPTRUST at Work.

“We know for a fact that is what plan sponsors are most interested in, and [we] are meeting them with that need,” he says.

The other major growth area is wealth management for 401(k) participants. Miller points out—before talking about that business potential—that the firm is very careful about when and how those services are offered.

“We’re already getting paid to provide wellness and advice, so the only way you can work with these participants or employees in wealth management is through a very structured and documented way that does not breach any fiduciary responsibility,” he says. “It’s a centralized approach to monitor that advice, and when it turns to personal assets, we will do that—but it’s not a solicitation process.”

Now, Wealth

CAPTRUST has numerous competitors following similar strategies of growth by syncing retirement and wealth advisement; those include, as ranked in order of total assets being reported by the firms, Creative Planning (more than $300 billion), Edelman Financial Engines (more than $284 billion) and SageView Advisory Group (more than $202 billion).

Fielding says CAPTRUST identified about seven years ago the potential to synchronize wealth management advisers with its national retirement plan footprint.

“We built out a national footprint by folding in and hiring retirement-focused advisers,” Miller says. “Now we are going into those same markets and acquiring and starting wealth management teams with the opportunity to get those wealth and institutional [advisers] working more together.”

Miller says he sees the wealth management industry “consolidating and expanding” at the same time, particularly as the generation of those 55 and older are looking to manage their retirement savings.

Miller says the $1 trillion announcement shows the scale CAPTRUST can bring to negotiating on behalf of its clients.

“It gives us a lot of buying power with our clients for unique asset management products, better pricing from recordkeepers, better pricing on funds in 401(k) plans and others,” he says. “The $1 trillion really represents a scale that gives us advantages and gives our clients advantages.”