Office address: 190 Carondelet Plaza, Suite 1200, St. Louis, MO 63105
Website: monetagroup.com
Year established: 1989
Company type: financial services
Employees: 570+
Expertise: investment advisory, wealth management, retirement planning, estate planning, tax planning, trust services, family office services, institutional consulting, philanthropy planning, business succession planning
Parent company: N/A
Key people: Eric Kittner (CEO), Andrew Kelsen (CIO), Keith Bowles (COO), Bill Rowe (chief growth officer), Dan Sherman (chief technology officer), Amanda Barrale (chief platform officer), Adam Kruger (CCO), Bethany Wilkinson (chief talent officer)
Financing status: private
Moneta Group Investment Advisors is a fee-only, partner-owned registered investment advisor (RIA) based in St. Louis. The firm holds more than $42 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2024. Mainly serving high-net-worth (HNW) individuals and institutions, it specializes in family office and institutional advisory services.
Moneta's story begins not as a wealth advisory firm, but as an insurance company. Its predecessor, Home Life Insurance Company, opened in St. Louis in 1869.
By 1933, as the Great Depression pushed US unemployment to 25 percent, the firm's forerunners had shifted toward financial planning. They built a service called "planned estates," with the idea that clients had problems to solve, not products to sell.
By the 1980s, the company had evolved into First Financial Group of St. Louis, led by owner and managing director Peter Schick. In 1988, Schick rebranded it as the Moneta Group and restructured it as a coalition of independent financial planners.
A year later, in 1989, Moneta registered as an RIA. Schick later sold the company to its partners, a decision that still defines Moneta today as a 100 percent partner-owned firm with no private equity involvement.
For 30 years after becoming an RIA, Moneta stayed entirely in St. Louis, with all its teams working out of two neighboring buildings in Clayton. That changed in 2019, when the firm opened its first out-of-state office in Denver. Kansas City, Boston, Chicago, and Boulder followed in the years after.
Since then, AUM grew from $14 billion at the end of 2015 to over $42 billion by the end of 2024. Moneta Group was also featured in InvestmentNews' 2023 Top Regional Fee-Only RIAs for the Midwest category. It ranked No. 1 in the region based on SEC Form ADV data.
The company's approach to growth has been selective rather than aggressive, favoring mergers with partner teams over traditional buyouts. In 2025, Moneta Group brought on Lane Hipple Wealth Management Group, a New Jersey-based RIA.
Moneta was said to be chosen because it offered independence and a partner ownership model over a private equity-backed structure, which Lane Hipple favored.
Moneta Group Investment Advisors serves both individual and institutional clients as a fee-only RIA:
Argent Capital Management, a separate RIA with ties to some Moneta partners, runs its own equity ETFs independently. Moneta's fees are asset-based, with no account minimums.
Moneta Group structures its work culture around four firm-wide programs (pillars), backed by partner funding and employee participation. These pillars are:
The company runs roughly 30 partner-led advisor teams, backed by an Enterprise Service Team of more than 150 professionals. To support its employees, Moneta Group provides them with benefits that include:
Beyond its employee benefits, Moneta Group aims to extend its care to the wider community through the MCF, funded by partners and employee volunteer hours. It has donated over $5 million to nearly 600 organizations.
Eric Kittner has served as Moneta Group's CEO and chair since 2018, having first joined the firm in 2003. Before joining the company, he worked at Ernst & Young, RubinBrown, and Arthur Andersen. Kittner studied accounting at The Catholic University of America and later trained at the London School of Economics.
Kittner leads Moneta Group alongside a senior team, which includes:
Moneta's leadership team spans the firm's core functions, from investments and compliance to technology and talent.
Moneta CEO Eric Kittner was named to InvestmentNews' 2025 Hot List, a yearly selection of 100 standout wealth professionals from across the country.
Hover or tapAlongside the industry recognition, Moneta Group's growth on the ground also made headlines in late 2025. The firm added the Williams team, an advisory group from Aveo Capital Partners, to its new Denver Tech Center office. It built on the earlier Lane Hipple merger and showed Moneta's continued expansion into key US markets while staying fully partner-owned.
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