June 4, 2026
by: Christopher C. Williams
One year after breaking away from wirehouse Morgan Stanley to join Tampa, Fla.-based Concurrent Investment Advisors network, Crownmark Wealth Advisors of Atlanta is growing AUM so fast that founders Stephen M. Welch and Sean Foote feel they occasionally must take a breather.
“Where we are today far exceeds our expectations on where we expected to be after year one,” said Foote, managing partner and portfolio management director, in an interview with Financial Advisor. “We’re just getting so much work and money coming in on a daily basis, it’s like we can’t even keep up.”
he duo is building vertical infrastructure to handle the new clients and client referrals that are pouring into the practice at a faster-than-expected clip. Supported by one staff member and three interns, they’re looking to add advisors. They also recently launched an in-house AI agent to onboard retirement plan participants and add wallet share.
“We’ve experienced strong momentum since the transition, both from the retention and transfer of existing client relationships, as well as new business generated through referrals, prospecting, and broader visibility following the launch of Crownmark,” Foote said, adding, “Right now we’re experiencing the growing pains.”
Partners for almost 20 years, the advisors attribute their success to tight relationships they’ve forged with clients through two transitions, many of whom are excited about their success in carving out a space in an industry where only 4% of advisors are black.
Welch and Foote, both first generation Caribbean Americans, lean into their “unique” story, as Foote calls it, and has burnished their “brotherhood brand” through an expanding social media presence: They launched their first podcast this month, and they’re involved in other public engagements.
“Part of our brand is the brotherhood that we have,” said Foote. “The bond Stephen and I have is sort of unbreakable and people recognize that.”
Now that they are aligned with Concurrent, which oversees more than $30 billion in assets under management and advisement, Crownmark can offer clients a wider range of investment options than before, including alternatives and private market strategies.
“Quite honestly, we are the rare bird,” said Foote. “We are very different than what [clients] typically see. We’ve actually been able to attract [them] just because they haven’t seen a black wealth management firm.”
Crownmark provides a broad range of wealth management and financial, retirement and estate planning to individuals, business owners, corporate executives, pro athletes and entertainers.
“Our endeavor is to serve all clients, no matter what their level of wealth is,” said Welch, noting the firm’s name “comes from our desire to treat clients like royalty.”
After 11 years at Morgan Stanley, where the advisors built a $300 million book of business, Welch and Foote launched as an independent RIA with Concurrent last April.
They’re among a growing stream of advisors exiting wirehouses to start or join larger RIAs. Many make the jump for the compensation incentive to join a new platform. But Welch and Foote felt the need to scratch a deep entrepreneurial itch and align with larger platforms that could offer them resources and better technology to fuel the scale they wanted.
“It was less about compensation and more about ownership, equity, and building enterprise value,” said Welch, managing partner and director of corporate retirement solutions. “We wanted the freedom to control our brand, client experience, and long-term vision. Concurrent has been a strong strategic partner in supporting that vision while still allowing us to maintain our independence and identity.”
Advisors who jump from wirehouses to independent RIA firms can get slammed with stiff startup costs, and “cumbersome” compliance issues. They might also possibly face non-compete and non-solicit agreements with their previous firms. And beyond that, their clients might simply be reluctant to follow them, Foote said. The average advisor breaking away from a litigious wirehouse, as they did, often brings just 50% to 60% of their book of business with them when they change firms, Welch and Foote say.
Crownmark has blasted past that AUM retention ceiling while generating solid revenue growth. Welch said his practice has captured about 90% of their pre-transition AUM. The advisors are also projecting 50% growth over their trailing-12-month revenue before the transition by year’s end, and 75% growth by the end of 2027.
Client referrals are the main driver of organic growth for most RIAs. According to a Cerulli report, 93% of RIAs rely on client networks to grow organically and 61% of new assets come from existing clients.
Getting To $1 Billion AUM
The partnership between Welch and Foote began when they were the only black advisors at Merrill Lynch’s vaunted training program in Atlanta’s Alpharetta, Southeast Complex. They bonded over shared ambition, respect for hard work and desire “to be successful at all costs,” Welch said. They largely felt unseen and unappreciated in the program and during their six years at Merrill as Foote, Welch & Associates.
The duo jumped to Morgan Stanley in 2014, where they continued to grow their book of business at a high double-digit clip. But they craved a platform where they could express their personalities and feel truly accepted, one that would support their growth and ambition to become one of the largest black-owned RIAs in the country. They found that in Concurrent.
They maintain they’re laying the foundation to achieve their “ambitious” goal of reaching $1 billion in assets in five years.
Besides relying on client referrals and boosting wallet share from existing clients, they’re also looking to add advisors to the practice. Furthermore, Foote said they have a “very structured and detailed strategy” to convert retirement plan participants into clients.
According to Welch, they’re well positioned to transition retirement plan participants into wealth management clients because they have expertise in both spheres, which enables them to “better manage those [plan] clients through their wealth and retirement life cycle.”
Furthermore, Foote added, Crownmark is “going to leverage the hell out of AI to create the efficiencies to support” growth. They recently launched an in-house product called Legacy Suite, an estate-planning agent that helps clients address their wills, trusts and broader estate planning needs within the advisory relationships.
Finally, the advisors say Crownmark will benefit over the long term from its focus on recruiting and developing young advisor talent.
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