Binah Capital Group is preparing to deploy minority equity and growth capital into its network of roughly 600 affiliated registered investment advisors, chief executive Craig Gould said in a recent interview, marking a strategic shift for the publicly-traded broker/dealer aggregator two years after its SPAC merger.
The firm now manages approximately $30 billion of assets under management across its three broker/dealer subsidiaries — Cabot Lodge Securities, World Equity Group and PKS Investments — while the RIA firms affiliated with Binah manage over $400 billion in AUM. Gould said the public structure has enabled the platform to scale and attract some of the largest RIAs in the industry, including Merit Financial Advisors and OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners.
Binah went public in early 2023 through the merger of Kingswood Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, and Wentworth Management Services, a broker/dealer aggregator. Gould characterised the decision to list as a transparency play designed to help affiliated RIAs answer due diligence questions when raising their own private-equity capital. He noted that when RIAs with commission-based businesses routed 10 to 30 per cent of revenue through a private broker/dealer, prospective investors struggled to assess counterparty risk.
The firm has since built out clearing relationships with Fidelity, Raymond James, RBC and Pershing — an agnostic infrastructure Gould said distinguishes Binah from competitors. That multi-custodial approach allows large RIA aggregators to acquire practices custodied at different firms while maintaining a single enterprise relationship with Binah, he explained.
Gould said Binah is now organising its 600-plus affiliated advisors into two tiers: large enterprises that are aggressive acquirers, and smaller lifestyle practices. The latter cohort has increasingly asked for help with best practices, succession plans, alternative investments and other products, prompting the firm to develop a formal financing programme.
Starting in the beginning of the third quarter, Gould said, Binah will launch a push to promote its ability to finance existing partners' businesses across the lifecycle — whether for growth capital, deleveraging transactions or outright succession plans. The firm is also developing programmes to purchase commission-based books of business outright.
Gould said Binah has already completed a handful of minority-stake transactions within its platform to test the model. He clarified that the initiative is not aimed at non-affiliated advisory firms, a market segment he said is already well served by other capital providers. Instead, the focus is on deepening relationships with advisors the firm has worked with for 10, 15 or 20 years.
The public structure, Gould said, makes it easier for Binah to source capital and deploy it into partner firms. He described the minority-investment programme as a natural extension of the firm's broker/dealer business, designed to strengthen ties with practices already routing commission revenue through Binah's platform.
Gould also outlined plans to consolidate Binah's three corporate RIAs and acquire another broker/dealer, though he did not provide a timeline or additional details on those initiatives.