Michael Ellison has spent 30 years in the financial services industry. He is the CEO of RPS Advisory Solutions, LLC (dba Retirement Planning Solutions), a registered investment adviser he leads today, and a practicing advisor with a client base built over decades. Over that time he has acquired and integrated advisory practices into his own firm, taking on their clients, their staff, and their founders’ reputations. That track record is the foundation of Kovrent’s acquisition strategy.

At Kovrent, that matters. Kovrent buys independent RIAs from the founders who built them. Michael is one of those founders, and he has sat on both sides of these transactions. He knows the economics of an advisory practice from the owner's chair: what drives retention, where margin actually comes from, what a succession plan looks like when it's real and when it's a paragraph on a website. When Kovrent evaluates a firm, Michael reads it as an operator who has run one through market cycles, regulatory change, and generational client transitions.

He also sets the standard for how Kovrent treats the people it backs. Founders sitting across the table from Michael are talking to a peer, not a buyer. That changes the conversation and it changes the terms.