With RIA acquisitions on pace to hit another record this year, Steward Partners is adding to the numbers with its purchase of an advisory practice with $450 million in client assets.
Steward Partners announced Tuesday that it had acquired registered investment advisory firm Jazz Wealth, an eight-member team out of Largo, Florida, near Tampa Bay.
The deal comes after a first quarter with a record number of deals — no matter who is doing the counting.
The investment bank and RIA-tracking firm Echelon reported last week that 142 industry M&A deals took place in the first quarter. That surpassed the previous quarterly record of 125 deals and also puts the industry on pace for a potential 475 M&A transactions this year, Echelon projected. Hitting that annual number would set another record,
That report followed the industry tracking-firm DeVoe & Co.'s similar finding last month. DeVoe, which does not include in its totals teams that left a wirehouse or other brokerage to join an RIA, counted
Danner at Steward Partners: 'M&A is saving the industry'
Steward Partners, a frequent RIA acquirer with roughly $50 billion in client assets, is doing its part to boost those numbers this year. Scott Danner, Steward chief growth officer, said in an interview Monday that Steward Partners has completed seven deals so far in 2026, five of them in the first quarter.
Danner said he sees the M&A as an unequivocal boon for the wealth management industry. With many older financial planners retiring and leaving the industry, smaller firms will struggle to serve clients with fewer advisors on staff unless they find a larger partner to work with.
"I think M&A is saving the industry," Danner said. "I say this every time I speak about it. You know, we have three new people coming into this industry for eight retiring, and that's a challenge."
For the eight principals at Jazz Wealth, all of them relatively young, retirement is nowhere near a top consideration. Dustin Tibbitts, managing director and wealth advisor at Jazz Wealth, said he wanted to find a partner that could provide back-office support while making no demands that his firm change the practices that have driven its growth to $450 million in client assets.
YouTube videos, wine socials to reach 'misfit' clients
Tibbitts said typical clients of Jazz Wealth are investors and savers who might be considered "misfits" in other corners of the wealth management industry. For one, they tend to be young; the average age among its roughly 3,500 clients falls in the mid-40s.
They also don't always have the asset totals that would make good client prospects to many firms. Jazz Wealth's website lists pricing options for people with as little as $2,000 in investible assets (1.5% of the total). The management fee falls to 0.5% for clients with $250,000 or more.
Many of the firm's clients are people Tibbitts and his colleagues have reached
"The focus has really always been not the overly educated crowd," Tibbitts said. "It's more of the working-class person that's looking for an advisor, that's looking for help, that wants somebody that will actually take the time to teach them — which is part of what YouTube has given us the opportunity to do."
The firm offers "Wine & Wealth" classes, inviting clients to meet once a week in its "speakeasy" to discuss investment-related topics over a glass or two. It even offers to place some trades alongside its clients, saying on its site, "While we're focused on the long term, we can have a little fun in the short term."
Inspired by the eccentricity, mastery of jazz musicians
Tibbitts said Jazz Wealth's origins are actually in the YouTube videos. Even before founding the firm in 2016, he had begun making online spots for his uncle and other relatives explaining various investment plans and ideas.
One day while on a treadmill at a gym, he received a phone call from a woman in Hawaii. She told him she was a fan of his videos.
"She said, 'I love it. How do I sign up?'" Tibbitts said. "And I thought, 'OK, that's what we need to do.'"
Tibbitts said the name Jazz Wealth comes in part from his love of jazz music but also his sense that jazz musicians tend to be eccentrics who have nonetheless managed to achieve mastery in a difficult art form.
"I wanted that to translate to my relationship with clients," Tibbitts said. "So this day, I just got off the phone with a client that called just to tell me a joke … just wanted to have fun with me for a minute. And I always like the approach that I can work with someone who's just like me."
Tibbitts said the deal with Steward Partners will let Jazz Wealth keep its name and separate identity while also giving it an ownership stake in the larger firm. The goal will now be to grow together.
Building an inclusive client list, rather than an exclusive one
Like many RIA owners who join large firms, Tibbitts and his colleagues are looking to their new partner Steward to provide support with human resources, compliance, marketing and myriad other back-office tasks that tend to eat into time they can spend with clients. Such a transfer of responsibilities is particularly important for a firm that has built itself on relationships with a relatively large number of clients with smaller account sizes.
Eric Powell, a financial advisor at Jazz Wealth, said he and his colleagues strive to avoid placing clients into different categories based on their account sizes. Firms that do assign their clients to different buckets almost inevitably end up giving more attention to those with more assets to manage.
"Because we do have a broad array of clients, we can't say that we have one that's got $10,000 and that's our focus, or we have one that's got $2 million and that's our focus," Powell said. "This allows us to be able to have that back-office support without having to segment and still make sure that we're treating every client the same."
In return for providing various types of assistance and a capital infusion, Steward Partners is taking on a firm with a distinct place in the industry. Jazz Wealth specializes in working not only with large numbers of investors who may not seem a natural fit for other wealth managers but also in reaching out to current and potential clients through frequently posted online videos.
"So many teams that we see have exclusive client lists, and they're phenomenal, and that makes them great at business," said Danner of Steward Partners. "But it's also nice to see an inclusive client list, which allows people to feel a part of something bigger. And everybody needs this type of advice nowadays … meeting them where they're sitting, not just where we want them to get to."
