CoastalOne, a hybrid broker/dealer and RIA platform based in Wilmington, Del., with $3.3 billion in total assets across 160 advisors, has rebranded to Realta Wealth, a move that reflects the evolution of the firm over the last year or so. The firm will continue under Orange Street Holdings' ownership, and Kevin Keefe will remain as its CEO.
The CoastalOne name goes back to 1989, when the firm was established on Cape Cod, and Keefe said it was time to have a new presence in the marketplace. It had been an owner-operated business until late 2022, when Ryan Hanks, founder and CEO of Madison Capital Group, a real estate investment firm, took a majority stake in Orange Street Holdings, the entity that owns CoastalOne.
Hanks bought the firm’s operators out of their equity ownership, and that precipitated turnover in CEO leadership. Charles Reiling, currently chief risk officer at TradePMR, was serving as CEO at the time, and transitioned out in early 2023. After conducting a CEO search, CoastalOne hired Keefe, a former executive with Osaic, LPL and Cetera.
Since then, the firm has built out its executive leadership team, adding Yanni V. Bousnakis, a former senior vice president and head of advisory platforms and investment solutions at Kestra Financial, as its Chief Product Officer. Keefe also tapped Larry Roth, founder and managing partner at RLR Strategic Partners, Joseph Kuo, founder and CEO of Haven Tower Group, and Mike Zebrowski, COO at Docupace, to join the firm’s corporate advisory board.
Keefe also sees the rebrand as an opportunity to broaden the firm’s capabilities and appeal to a wider swath of advisors. Historically, CoastalOne worked with advisors who focused on high-net-worth and affluent clients who used complex, alternative products.
“That’s been the legacy of the firm,” he said. “The idea is to create a robust independent wealth platform with all the wealth management capabilities that an independent advisor would look to offer to an affluent or high-net-worth client.”
That will include, for example, more capabilities to serve investment advisors, more traditional product offerings, and more financial planning and advanced planning capabilities, he said. The firm will also build out business consulting resources.
“When we think about growth, it’s in a couple different dimensions, one of which is helping our existing advisors grow with the clients they have and/or attract new clients,” Keefe said. “We think bringing a set of capabilities that allow them to drive local practice growth is pretty important.”
“To the degree that we are more proactive with them in supporting work with existing clients around traditional product, around planning capabilities, around the investment advisory environment alone, we think will generate meaningful growth for our current affiliated advisors.”
Realta also believes these capabilities will appeal to a different type of independent advisor, allowing the firm to be more competitive and recruit more aggressively.
“We also have built and are going to work very hard to curate a community of advisors here that’s going to be different than a lot of our competitors, in that this community will both encourage and facilitate networking amongst its constituents, will be in a position to facilitate collaboration differently than most other independent platforms,” Keefe said.
In terms of collaboration, Realta will find ways to connect advisors with complementary skills and capabilities. For instance, Keefe says its platforms and systems will allow one advisor to offer up the investment advisory expertise of another advisor within the Realta system.
The firm chose the name Realta, the Celtic term for “star,” because it aims to be a guiding light to both advisors and their end clients.
Several household names in the wealth management industry have rebranded over the last year, including Riskalyze (now Nitrogen), Advisor Group (now Osaic), Sigma Financial (now Axtella) and CI Financial’s U.S. wealth business (now Corient).