Cerity Partners enters Iowa with Gilbert & Cook deal

Cerity Partners has unveiled a significant expansion via a merger with a West Des Moines firm, its latest move in a 2026 buying spree that has touched Texas, California, Illinois, Tennessee, Oregon and now the Midwest's heartland.

Cerity Partners and Gilbert & Cook announced their agreement to merge on Friday, marking Cerity's first entry into the Iowa market.

Gilbert & Cook, founded in 1993 and based in West Des Moines, will operate under the Cerity Partners name going forward and will contribute approximately $2 billion in assets under management to the firm.

The deal gives Gilbert & Cook's clients access to Cerity's broader menu of services, including business owner advisory, multigenerational estate planning, private family office work, divorce financial planning and private markets investing, according to the announcement.

"Gilbert & Cook has built an outstanding reputation based on trust, expertise, and an unwavering dedication to their clients," said Claire O'Keefe, partner and head of partner development at Cerity Partners. "By bringing our firms together, we are strengthening our ability to deliver deeply personalized, integrated wealth advice while expanding our reach into the Des Moines community."

"For more than 30 years, our mission has been centered on building relationships – with our clients, with one another, and with the community we are proud to call home – to help clients navigate life's financial decisions through trusted and thoughtful guidance," added Linda Cook, founder and managing partner of Gilbert & Cook. "At the heart of the decision to join Cerity Partners was a strong alignment in values and philosophy."

The Gilbert & Cook merger is Cerity's latest addition to its stepped-up calendar year for deals. The firm opened 2026 by acquiring Austin Private Wealth in Texas and SOL Capital Management, a Maryland advisory founded in 1987, before broadening into institutional consulting through a merger with Seattle-based Verus Investments that added roughly $1.2 trillion in advisory assets to the platform.

Read more: Mega-RIAs accelerate into institutional assets with Cerity-Verus merger

March brought two more additions in the Chicago area and Southern California, April added a Tennessee foothold through a deal with Covenant Partners, and by June the firm had absorbed a Torrance, California tax and CPA practice into its El Segundo office. July saw Cerity push into the Pacific Northwest for the first time with a merger involving Portland-based Cordant Wealth Partners.

Cerity also bolstered its C-suite in July, when the firm named Will Peng as its first chief innovation officer, tasking him with knitting together a service model across a firm that has grown rapidly through M&A.

The firm hit a snag in April, however, when the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund dropped Cerity as its investment consultant based on concerns over the private equity ownership behind its new parent company. Cerity is currently majority-owned by private equity sponsor Genstar Capital, with additional minority stakes held by Warburg Pincus and Lightyear Capital, and management and employees retaining the remaining shares.

Read more: Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund scraps Cerity Partners over private equity concerns

Cerity's expansion comes alongside a broader acceleration across the registered investment adviser industry. According to Echelon Partners' first-quarter 2026 RIA M&A Deal Report, Cerity closed five deals in the first quarter alone, putting it on pace to significantly exceed its full 2025 total of seven transactions.

Echelon counted 142 transactions in the first quarter, a new quarterly record that topped the prior high of 125 deals set in both the third and fourth quarters of 2025. Average assets under management per deal reached $1.8 billion in the first quarter, the highest level since 2021, while total transacted assets hit $1.67 trillion, more than double the $805 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2025.