Captrust picks up $1.1B RIA Trutina Financial

Captrust made its eighth acquisition of 2023 this week, adding Bellevue, Washington-based Trutina Financial, the company announced Friday.

The deal adds $1.1 billion in assets to Raleigh, North Carolina-based Captrust, which oversees $832 billion for individuals, families, retirement plans, endowments, foundations and religious groups. The acquired firm, Trutina, has clients in family wealth management, retirement plans and corporate cash management, Captrust noted in its announcement of the deal.

Fifteen people are joining Captrust as a result of the acquisition, including Trutina managing partner Geoffrety Schock and senior partner Matt Myers. The acquired firm will rebrand as Captrust, the company noted.

“The Pacific Northwest is a region we have wanted to expand in for a long time,” Rush Benton, senior director of strategic growth at Captrust, said in the announcement. “Adding the folks at Trutina is the perfect way to initiate our presence in this market.”

Myers said that becoming part of Captrust was a good fit for the firm.

“They will help us grow up as a firm and be able to keep serving our clients with more sophisticated services. Plus, we’re able to put equity into the hands of our people,” he said in the announcement.

The deal shows Captrust’s appetite for acquisitions, but it’s clear that the company has been increasingly become more selective in the firms it snaps up, said Peter Campagna, partner at Wise Rhino Group.

The deal “is classic – it’s very much how Captrust has been acting,” Campagna said. “Captrust has been getting more and more particular about who they’re interested in – and this [deal] fits the mold.”

Although “the retirement business is a core, that’s been lower on the priority list,” he said, citing more of a focus at Captrust in building out the endowment, wealth and high-end family office aspects of the business.

This year, Captrust has added $14 billion to its assets under supervision through acquisitions, including the purchases of Monroe Vos Consulting ($5.8 billion), QA Wealth Management ($770 million), Aevitas Wealth Management ($567 million), Omega Wealth Partners ($710 million), Southern Wealth Management ($2.3 billion), Column Capital ($1.4 billion) and Normann Financial ($1.3 billion).

Merger and acquisition activity in the RIA and insurance spaces has kept up its breakneck pace, despite a increase of roughly 7% in the cost of capital, indicating that nothing seems capable of stemming the interest in dealmaking anytime soon, Campagna said.

“We are as busy as ever. And there seem to be more buyers and private equity firms interested in getting into the space than ever,” he said, adding that the incentives for sellers also remain strong. “It gets more and more attractive to join these aggregators as they get more developed.”