Ferguson Wellman, a registered funding advisor based mostly in Portland, Ore., with greater than $9 billion in consumer property, was based in 1975 with a deal with working with union pension plans, companies and foundations. Over time, it leveraged that base of experience and clientele to shift its asset combine extra towards people and households than establishments.
Ferguson Wellman was based by Joe Ferguson, Norb Wellman and Jim Rudd once they left their jobs at brokerage homes to start out an advisory agency primarily for institutional purchasers. As we speak, with particular person wealth administration accounting for 70% of property, the RIA appears very completely different from 50 years in the past. Nevertheless, the adjustments have steadily emerged from that preliminary base, based on Director Ralph Cole, who joined the agency in 1998.
“It doesn’t must be a revolution yearly,” Cole mentioned. “We are able to evolve with our purchasers and the business as a result of we had an enormous base of purchasers and numerous property beneath administration. … It could be exhausting to start out a agency like ours from scratch right now.”
A part of that shift has come from strategic strikes and investments the employee-owned agency has made through the years. In 2013, it established a separate division for purchasers with property of about $1 million to $4 million known as West Bearing Investments. In 2020, it launched a non-public household workplace known as the Octavia Group to service households with $10 million in property or extra. In 2021, the agency made its first regional enlargement by opening an workplace in Bellevue, Wash.
Along with its core observe serving purchasers with $5 million or extra, Ferguson Wellman’s mixture of advisors and income helped it land on this 12 months’s RIA Edge 100 listing of corporations that exhibit sustainable and accountable development.
“Over the historical past of the agency, the institutional aspect of the enterprise has grown, but it surely’s that particular person aspect of the enterprise that has actually taken off,” Cole mentioned. “We now have a dozen planners on workers and plenty of extra companies for these people and purchasers than ever earlier than. … We’ve gone the place our purchasers have gone.”
In line with Cole, one other issue within the agency’s development is an employee-ownership mannequin that has prioritized sharing fairness throughout the workforce and eschewing exterior capital. About 38 of the agency’s practically 70 workers are shareholders, and nobody individual owns greater than 16% of the agency.
As well as, about 50% of the agency’s possession has been turned over in simply the final seven years, with fairness going to junior advisors at a reduction.
“We expect [remaining independent] is a part of our secret sauce and has made us so profitable and so completely different,” Cole mentioned. “We get pleasure from controlling our personal future … if we had been to surrender a part of the possession, we must quit a part of these income and we wouldn’t be capable to make investments as we see match.”
When it comes to bringing on new workforce members, Cole mentioned Ferguson Wellman focuses on advisors with expertise at banks or dealer/sellers.
“After we’re recruiting, we’re capable of say to individuals, ‘We’re going to remain unbiased, and you’ve got an opportunity to personal a part of this,’” Cole mentioned. “Now we have 30-something-year-olds planning to retire right here—that’s so completely different from so many different industries.”
A kind of recruits was Casia Chappell, who joined Ferguson Wellman about six years in the past from a wealth supervisor in Eugene, Ore.
“Little question, the chance for possession ranked excessive, significantly as a result of I used to be transferring to Portland to affix the agency,” Chappell mentioned. “It felt like I used to be investing in them as a lot as they had been investing in me.”
Chappell, a vice chairman of planning, mentioned she was distinctive in that her sole focus was monetary planning—a task that always doesn’t result in an fairness stake as these doing funding administration. Ferguson Wellman, nevertheless, advised her that if she introduced “enhanced worth to purchasers,” it will be potential to amass fairness, and he or she ended up along with her first tranche of possession after three years.
She mentioned that stake helps encourage her each with purchasers and colleagues.
“It fosters collaboration once we face challenges and alternatives,” she mentioned. “There’s a further layer of motivation and accountability as a result of whereas I could be answerable for working with particular purchasers, we consider all purchasers as ‘our purchasers.’
On the agency’s web site, founder Wellman mentioned concerning the RIA’s origins: “We transitioned from a commission-basis to a fee-basis, which enabled us to start out working with purchasers instantly. Beginning one thing new was additionally about management, not less than in my thoughts. I didn’t need somebody from New York telling me what to pay my workers.”
Going ahead, the agency’s 10 principals are charged with persevering with that mission whereas making selections to maintain the agency rising.
Final week, Ferguson Wellman introduced it had signed an 11-year lease for workplace area within the Fox Tower in Portland. The agency will transfer down the road from its present tackle to the brand new location in 2026.
Cole sees extra regional workplace enlargement sooner or later by way of including new advisors. He additionally mentioned the agency is contemplating adjoining companies reminiscent of belief and property planning.
In the meantime, he expects consumer retention and referrals to stay robust partly due to the multi-generational secure of advisors.
“The way in which we share possession in our agency and the best way we evolve as a agency could be very a lot the identical as an establishment or household,” he mentioned. “I’ve labored with individuals for 20 years, and I can determine somebody inside the agency who can work with their youngsters—we’re multi-generational, similar to them.”