Two veteran financial advisors merged their practices together with the goal of building the wealth management industry's first Black owned-registered investment advisory firm with $1 billion in client assets.
Anna N'Jie-Konte and Keith Beverly are seeking to boost the size of their new firm to more than 15 times its current asset level of $65 million through recruiting and M&A deals and organic growth among Black, Latino and other minority clients, nonprofit institutions and ultrahigh net worth individuals of all races investing for social impact, they said in an interview. N'Jie-Konte and Beverly unveiled their New York-based firm,
N'Jie-Konte, a member of Financial Planning's list of
The two advisors are part of
"We are democratizing access to wealth and financial advice and knowledge and giving that to those who have been overlooked by our business," N'Jie-Konte said. "They haven't been advised by a person who has the same lived experiences as them or who has their same values."
Many wealthier individuals who have been wooed by the industry as clients are now seeking ways to invest in more equitable distributions of resources, N'Jie-Konte pointed out, citing a group of young people called
"Our goal is to get to be a billion-dollar, Black-owned firm. The reason why we came together is there's just such a dearth of diverse-owned firms of scale," Beverly said. "There are lots of senior advisors who share our view of the world and what we're looking to build, and they're looking to build something similar."
Peers compliment idea
Other advisors associated with building more paths into the field for Black and Latino advisors and clients praised N'Jie-Konte and Beverly's plans. While planner Louis Barajas rejects the industry's fixation with assets under management, he said in an email that he views their efforts as similar to
The billion-dollar mark for Re-Envision will show "that they can compete against the other firms in the industry recognized for having AUM," Barajas said.
"It's crucial that we build organizations that attract and build advisors that have the highest level of (cultural) sensitivity to underserved communities," he added. "I'm 100% certain that most wealth management firms miss the mark when it comes to providing financial advice to people of color and especially people who are underrepresented because they lack the incomes or minimum dollar amount of investable assets."
N'Jie-Konte and Beverly have set out on "such a large undertaking" for the industry, where it's important to have solo practitioner businesses and bigger brands for advisors who don't want to manage as many operational tasks at their own firms, according to planner Emlen Miles-Mattingly, the founder of Madera, California-based
Miles-Mattingly first gained a large following in the profession through his podcast, the
In an interview, he said he admired "the audacity" of N'Jie-Konte and Beverly's goal and expressed confidence that they could reach the milestone. The industry needs more big RIAs led by underrepresented planners including women, Asian Americans and members of other minority groups, Miles-Mattingly said. Those firms' clients "deserve to see us succeed," and ultrahigh net worth investors should be looking for minority-led RIAs to help them with trust services, donor-advised funds and other specialized areas, he said.
"We don't have enough of us talking about those types of things so that people who are in those situations know that we can help them too," Miles-Mattingly said. "This takes a ton of courage to even think against the status quo and the norm and say, 'We're going to build something that's never been built.'"
Plans for the future
At Re-Envision, N'Jie-Konte is the firm's president, while Beverly is its chief investment officer. The firm has six employees, with four CFPs. N'Jie-Konte plans to step back from her advisory practice eventually to take on more leadership, recruiting and mentoring duties as the firm's CEO. They're trying to create their own RIA aggregator rather than joining a giant, and any potential outside investors in the firm would need to share their mission in common, she said.
"It's very easy to find a way to make a lot of money in this business and just cash out and get the check, but our personal commitment is bigger than that," N'Jie-Konte said. "So most of those places wouldn't be a fit."
Beverly's separately managed account, the Racial Equity Leaders Strategy, is close to reaching $10 million in assets and will top $25 million by the end of the year, he said. The strategy uses third-party, anonymous surveys grading publicly traded firms based on "insights and perspectives from women of color," Beverly said. He and N'Jie-Konte aim to recruit minority advisors from the largest RIAs and other wealth management companies in the industry.
"They aren't providing healthy working environments for their advisors of color. By and large, they aren't really serving clients of color, either," Beverly said. "For advisors who have that as a focus, what we're building will be very attractive to them."
