Apella Wealth scores deal double, sealing $12 billion AUM milestone with bicoastal additions

Apella Wealth burst forward on its acquisition strategy this week, closing two deals in quick succession on opposite coasts to add almost a billion dollars in assets under management.

The West Hartford, Connecticut-based firm announced that it has acquired Morris Financial Concepts, Inc., a Mount Pleasant, South Carolina-based RIA founded in 1983, bringing approximately $544 million in assets under management.

Morris Financial founder Kyra Hollowell Morris and Chief Compliance Officer James "Tucker" Morris will join Apella along with the rest of the team. The firm offers financial planning, investment management, retirement planning, tax strategy and legacy planning services to individuals and families.

"We spent more than a year thoughtfully searching for a firm that shared our fiduciary, planning-first approach and would allow us to continue serving clients the way we have for more than four decades," Kyra Hollowell Morris said in a statement.

On the West Coast, Apella revealed Longview Financial Advisors, a San Rafael, California-based firm, joined the platform with approximately $384 million in AUM.

Longview founder Tim Harrington, who's joining Apella along with his team, serves a mixed client base of professionals, families and retirees. He pointed to "the strong alignment in our investment philosophy, planning-led approach and client-first cultures."

Madison Snider, director at WPCG – which took a minority stake in Crewe Advisors alongside HGGC in June – highlighted the strategic benefits from Morris's decades of local relationships in coastal South Carolina and Longview's "evidence-based investment philosophy paired with holistic advice."

The two deals mark Apella's 17th and 18th acquisitions since Wealth Partners Capital Group invested in the firm in September 2021, and the firm's 28th and 29th deals since inception. Together, they add approximately $928 million in assets under management to Apella, which reported approximately $12 billion in total AUM.

In the first half 2026, Fidelity's RIA deal monitoring counted 4 transactions by Apella, which added a cumulative $2.3 billion to the RIA.

Read more: Fidelity M&A report finds growing pool of RIA buyers

The Morris and Longview deals land amid what industry researchers are calling a period of heightened selectivity in RIA M&A, even as overall deal volume keeps climbing. The 2026 RIA Deal Room report by Advisor Growth Strategies counted 276 RIA transactions in 2025, a new high, with a median valuation multiple of 11.6 times adjusted EBITDA.

The report described a market segmenting between well-positioned sellers and everyone else, warning that RIAs in the so-called "vanishing middle" range of $500 million to $5 billion face pressure to either scale quickly or eventually sell to a larger platform. Against that backdrop, it described a category of emerging acquirers among buyers, who are "focused on gaining traction as an acquirer and building a high upside value proposition for merger candidates."

Read more: RIA valuations are riding a bubble set to pop, dealmaking veterans warn

Separately, Schwab's 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study found that inorganic growth remains a live strategy across the industry. Over the past five years, 35% of firms with $250 million or more in assets reported pursuing some form of inorganic activity, including mergers, acquisitions or bringing on advisors with an existing book of business. Among the top reasons for inorganic strategies, firms pointed to increasing AUM, revenue, and client growth (91%); acquiring talent (65%); and creating scale (55)%.

Looking ahead, the study found that 24% of firms with more than $250 million in assets are actively seeking to buy another RIA, a figure that rises to 31% among firms with more than $1 billion in assets.