$1.3B RIA Teams With XY Planning Network & Co-Founder

Alan Moore, co-founder of AdvicePay, notes much of its $500,000 in seed funding came from advisors.

A billion-dollar RIA just got bigger -- and younger.

Abacus Wealth Partners, a $1.3 billion RIA with offices in California and Philadelphia, has acquired the three-year-old RIA of Alan Moore, co-founder of the Gen Y-focused XY Planning Network.

Under the new partnership, Moore will bring his Serenity Financial Consulting clients to Abacus and will work on the firm's planning program geared toward younger and less-affluent clients, focusing on an outreach approach similar to that of XYPN, he says. Moore will continue to operate XYPN independently while Abacus will join XYPN as its founding corporate member.

Since launching the network last year with Michael Kitces, partner and director of research at Pinnacle Advisory Group, it has grown to include nearly 110 fee-only firms. Rather than working on an AUM-only basis, Moore says XYPN harnessed the monthly subscription model he started at Serenity in an effort to make advisory services affordable for young and low-asset clients.

"When I launched Serenity back in 2012, I proved that we could be profitable working with young clients and we proved that within a smaller firm model," Moore says, adding that he hopes to demonstrate that it will also work at a large firm.

"[Abacus] had implemented some of what we were doing, but not all of it," he explains. "So we went back and forth over the last year about how to get [Abacus] involved in the XY Planning Network. When I decided ultimately I needed to take a step back from my RIA, [J.D. Bruce, president of Abacus], was the first person I chatted with."

Carrying the title of Champion for NextGen, Moore will now take on advisor-training responsibilities and help develop new techniques and strategies to reach both the younger generations of investors, as well as older clients that have yet to build enough assets to work with institutional firms.

"I don't know if it's a personal mission or what, but I just get so tired watching the affluent community turn away young clients, and not even necessarily young clients, but clients without assets," he says. "I would like to continue to see this business model and fee structure expand and be able to take on more clients and serve in a different capacity."

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