Cetera continues RIA push with purchase of $1.45 billion Kansas firm

Cetera Holdings said Tuesday that it had purchased the Kansas City, Kansas, registered investment advisory firm The Retirement Planning Group, which has $1.45 billion in client assets, according to its most recent Form ADV with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cetera Holdings, the parent company to the giant broker-dealer and RIA network Cetera Financial Group, indicated last month it was going to move more seriously into the RIA market when it hired Fidelity Investments senior executive Mike Durbin as its CEO.

Both broker-dealers and RIA have seen plenty of merger and acquisition activity in the past decade. But RIAs command much higher valuations from buyers than broker-dealers do right now, making them more attractive, if typically smaller, targets.

Terms of Cetera's acquisition were not disclosed.

At the end of April, The Retirement Planning Group had 14 advisors and 40 employees.

"This partnership sets us up for a bright future as we continue to attract advisors seeking to focus more on taking care of their clients and less on the operational aspects of running a business," the firm's CEO, Kevin Conard, said in a statement.

Cetera has been busy. In addition to hiring Durbin in May, the company said earlier this year that it was buying the wealth business of insurer Securian Financial Group, which includes more than 1,000 advisors who oversee $24.8 billion in assets under management and $47.4 billion in assets under administration. A few dozen or so of those advisors have walked and left for competitors, but that’s to be expected during such a sale.

Cetera Financial Group, with 8,000 financial advisors and $330 billion in client assets, is one of the largest independent broker-dealer networks in the industry.