Episode 28
In the latest episode of Growth Leaders of Wealth Management, Meg Carpenter sits down with Cerity Partners CEO Kurt Miscinski and Chief Growth Officer Michael Barry to unpack how the firm turned a professional services blueprint into a roughly $200 billion enterprise built to endure.
Key Takeaways:
- What can wealth management learn from the world's great professional services firms? Cerity Partners was built on a blueprint borrowed from accounting, law, and consulting firms designed to think in decades and endure for a century or more. The ideas were never a secret. The advantage came from executing them inside wealth management.
- Why does enduring growth require more than a strategy? Behind Cerity's growth sits the infrastructure to sustain it: a true partnership where all 375 partners hold one vote, more than 1,400 colleagues who own equity, and a 60,000-square-foot university with professors on staff. That investment is what lets the firm scale without diluting its culture or its client experience.
- Will AI make human connection more valuable? Michael sees AI as a way to sharpen the work internally and help advisors show up smarter for their clients. Kurt goes a step further: he believes the AI revolution makes human connection the biggest differentiator of all, precisely because it's the one thing technology can't replace.
Meet Cerity Partners
When Kurt Miscinski co-founded Cerity Partners in 2009, he drew his blueprint from outside the advisory world entirely. He looked to the world's leading accounting, law, and consulting firms, the kind of organizations designed to think in decades and still be standing a century from now, and he wondered why nothing like them existed as a standalone professional services firm in wealth management.
The answer has grown into a firm whose scale is easier to show than to describe. Since the end of 2021, Cerity Partners has expanded from roughly 350 professionals to about 1,700, from $61 billion in assets to roughly $200 billion, and from about 8,000 clients to roughly 40,000. Revenue now runs north of a billion dollars, and the firm is hitting 10% organic growth.
A Partnership Built on Ownership
Cerity operates as a true partnership in every sense of the word. All 375 partners hold one vote each, and the firm makes its major strategic decisions together at an annual offsite rather than handing them down from the top. More than 1,400 colleagues own equity in the business, close to four times the size of the partnership itself, which gives a wide group of people a meaningful stake in how the firm grows.
Ownership at Cerity is something colleagues earn as much as something they buy. They can purchase equity, and they can also earn it through their contributions to the firm's success. As Kurt described it, the firm keeps its focus on getting better and trusts that getting bigger tends to follow.
A University That Trains the Firm
One of the clearest expressions of that philosophy is Cerity Partners University, a 60,000-square-foot campus staffed by professors who left academia to teach there. This past May, 50 recent graduates spent eight weeks on site together, weekends included, building the kind of foundation the firm wants every colleague to have.
Kurt won't defend the investment with an ROI number, and that's very much the point. He sees it as a cost of doing business, one measured in engagement, culture, and the firm's ability to keep its promise of world-class advice. Courses run oversubscribed, and the young colleagues who come up through the program tend to form lifelong bonds that help hold a fast-growing firm together.
The case against the advisor "unicorn"
The university also reflects a specific belief about talent. Cerity doesn't expect any single advisor to be an estate planner, tax strategist, investment expert, business developer, and future leader all at once. Colleagues instead identify where they can excel and go deep in those areas, leaning on the expertise of the broader firm for everything else. That approach gives people room to become exceptional in the work that suits them best, which tends to be far more energizing than stretching to be adequate across a dozen disciplines.
A Growth Engine That Reaches Clients Early
New client relationships at Cerity start in one of two places. Some begin with a direct introduction to an advisor. The rest come through firm-led growth, which runs on three channels, including a workplace business, a digital marketing effort, and a set of partnerships matched to specific client profiles.
The workplace channel is the most structurally interesting of the three. Companies hire Cerity to serve as a personal CFO for their executives and key talent, which means the firm reaches clients through their employer at the very moment their wealth is being created, and it arrives with the company's endorsement attached. Those engagements anchor to compensation and benefits, a financial plan, an estate plan, tax planning and preparation, and risk mitigation. Every one of them is covered by an in-house specialist, so the executive isn't left general contracting the relationship themselves.
The partnerships channel is built around specific client profiles, and the clearest example is Cerity's role as the exclusive wealth management partner for Nasdaq Private Markets, which touches roughly half the tender offers in the market today. As companies stay private longer, they have to create liquidity for early investors and employees. That partnership puts Cerity beside those individuals at a pivotal moment of wealth creation.
Human Edge in an AI World
Ask Cerity's two leaders what excites them most about the next 12 to 18 months and you get two answers that fit together. Michael points to AI. The firm is leveraging it internally to gain sharper insights, work more efficiently, and serve clients more intelligently, and he's careful to frame it as something that enriches an advisor relationship rather than replaces one.
Kurt believes the AI revolution makes human connection the biggest differentiator there is, because it's the one thing the technology can't replicate. He also sees it as the best answer to the anxiety in this industry about being disrupted: what AI can't touch is exactly what advisors should be leaning into. In an era when trust is harder to earn, the relationship between one advisor and one family may well become wealth management's most valuable asset.
Every firm that grows on purpose has a story worth telling. At Ficomm Partners, we help RIAs and wealth management platforms turn intentional strategy into durable organic growth. Book a consultation to start telling yours.
Connect with us:
- Megan Carpenter on LinkedIn
- Ficomm Partners Website
- Kurt Miscinski on LinkedIn
- Michael Barry on LinkedIn
- Cerity Partners Website
About Ficomm Partners
Ficomm Partners is the embedded growth partner for results-driven RIAs, and wealth management platforms. With a track record of helping over 250 clients achieve their growth goals, Ficomm understands that while industry patterns may repeat, each firm's growth challenges are unique. Ficomm prioritizes strategy and finds the most impactful ways to move you toward your goals. We align all your marketing activities with your business objectives, acting as your dedicated growth partner with our human-first approach, strategy-first methodology, and unrivaled team of industry marketing experts. For more information, visit ficommpartners.com