Our Story

Built by people who have run RIAs, bought them, and kept them.

Kovrent is a holding company that buys independent RIAs from the founders who built them and grows them for the long term. Our story is rooted in operating experience: three decades of building and acquiring advisory practices, combined with a team that has spent its careers building and scaling companies.

The team About Kovrent

Founder Spotlight

Over 30 years in the RIA space. Building, acquiring, operating.

Michael Ellison is a practicing financial advisor and CEO of RPS Advisory Solutions, the SEC-registered investment adviser he operates today. Over three decades he built that firm from the ground up and acquired other advisory practices into it. Series 6, 7, 63, and 65. Certified Retirement Counselor®. Still serving his own clients. That expertise is in the room for every firm Kovrent evaluates.

Michael’s bio Meet the other founders →

Michael Ellison, Partner & Co-Founder at Kovrent

“I’ve spent 30 years operating, buying, and building RIAs. Founders sitting across the table from me are talking to a peer, not a buyer.”

Michael Ellison · Partner & Co-Founder

The numbers behind our story

30+

Years acquiring and integrating advisory practices

100%

Of the firm. We buy the whole business, not the book

$100M–$700M

AUM of the SEC-registered firms we acquire

The values that bring us together

What we believe

The founder decides.

You built it. You should choose the buyer, the timing, and how long you stay.

Entrepreneurial to the core.

We built this firm from zero, the way you built yours. We think like owners because we are owners, and we back ideas that don’t fit the template.

Innovation that earns its keep.

We adopt what makes your firm faster and sharper, modern AI included, and we skip what’s just a demo.

Trustworthy because we know the work.

We know how RIA firms operate: the billing runs, the exams, the client calls, the Monday mornings. Trust here is built on fluency, not promises.

Compliant and diligent, by design.

Everything new we install lives inside a compliance and security framework built for SEC scrutiny, not around it. Diligence is how the innovation stays safe.

We take firms further.

The goal isn’t to preserve your firm in amber. It’s to help it reach a level it couldn’t reach alone, without losing what made it yours.

Our evolution

How Kovrent came together

The operator

A 30-year advisory career. One firm built from zero, other practices acquired and integrated into it, and a next generation of advisors developed inside it. The model Kovrent is built on existed long before Kovrent did.

The credentials

A CFP® professional and practicing advisor inside that same firm, with the planning, investment, and regulatory credentials to underwrite an advisor-client relationship from the inside, not from the ADV.

The builders

Two partners who have spent their careers founding, building, and scaling companies, and who structured a long-hold ownership model with no fund clock and no second sale.

One firm

The partners saw the same problem from different seats: thousands of founder-owned RIAs approaching succession with no successor and no good buyer. Kovrent is the answer they built together.

Management team

Four co-founding partners, both sides of the table.

Two spent their careers inside advisory firms answering the succession question. Two spent theirs building and scaling companies. Behind them sit the people inside the firms we hold and a board of advisors who work with us through diligence and closing.

Meet the management team

Michael Ellison, Co-Founder and Partner at Kovrent

Aaron Wilson, Co-Founder and Partner at Kovrent

Sherrard Harrington, Co-Founder and Partner at Kovrent

Noah Ellison, Co-Founder and Partner at Kovrent

Our network

A board of advisors that covers our blind spots.

Four partners do not know everything, and we do not pretend to. Around the firm sits a board of advisors drawn from private equity, wealth management, and professional services. They work with us during due diligence and transactions, challenge our assumptions, and bring experience we would otherwise have to rent.

Private equity and M&A

Operators and investors who have bought and sold companies, and who pressure-test our structures, our pricing, and our downside before we sign.

RIA operations and compliance

Advisors who have run firms, sat through SEC exams, and managed custodian transitions. They see what an ADV does not show.

Legal, tax, and transaction

Specialists who work alongside the partners during due diligence and closing, so founders get clean terms and no surprises.