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In the wake of private equity firm Reverence Capital Partners’ $2 billion recapitalization of Osaic (in which Reverence retained its majority stake while bringing in Bain Capital as a new investor), Osaic is focusing on organic growth as a key growth driver.
During Osaic’s NXT Conference in Boston, Dimple Shah, an executive vice president of strategy and client experience at Osaic, said there was “so much opportunity,” noting a lot of the firm’s growth to date has been through M&A.
But after Osaic’s rebranding integration of its eight affiliated broker/dealers into one structure (called “Journey to One” by the firm), Shah said the IBD was starting “to turn on the organic growth engine.”
“It hasn’t not been there, but I don’t think it’s been there to the extent that we’re punching at or above our weight, relative to the size and scale of Osaic, right?” she said. “I mean, we’ve been recruiting, but I think that recruiting can grow even stronger.”
In an interview with Wealth Management about Reverence Capital’s recapitalization, Shannon Reid, the firm’s head of advisor growth and engagement, who joined from Raymond James late last year, said the firm was “back to doing business the way we want to be doing business” post-integration.
“In the last 18 months, two years, advisors continued to grow, but I would say Osaic, as a firm, as it was consolidating through that process, was not focused on advisor growth and organic growth, right?” Reid said. “We were focused on building the foundation for much faster and better growth after the fact.”
Reverence first took a majority stake in Osaic (then called Advisor Group) in 2019. The new deal raised more than $2 billion in fresh capital, allowing it to repay existing investors in the PE firm’s funds while committing money to Osaic’s balance sheet through a continuation vehicle.
The governance and board composition will remain the same, and the firms didn’t disclose what Osaic’s valuation was in the deal. The lead investors in the deal include Ares Secondaries funds, Lexington Partners and other institutional investors.
Reverence also committed capital from its current flagship Fund IV, with Osaic planning to use the money for organic growth, mergers and acquisitions and “other strategic initiatives.” According to Reid, the firm didn’t have any large acquisitions in its pipeline (though it remained “opportunistic,” she said).
Firm executives have acknowledged the difficulties of the integration, with Reid noting during her presentation at the conference that the integration was “pretty bold, and it was really necessary, but it was also really hard,” adding advisors “felt that in your businesses, in your teams, and in your day-to-day work.”
At points, recruiting and retention took hits, with several sizable teams opting to depart, including a $1 billion-plus Florida-based office of supervisory jurisdiction, which moved to Ausdal Financial Partners, and Pilot Financial, a $4.6 billion firm, which moved to LPL.
According to Shah, the tide has turned, with “very strong” recruiting and retention numbers. Shah said the firm experienced a “dip in retention” during the integration, but in the third and fourth quarters of 2025, retention stabilized, and in the first quarter of 2026, it delivered some of the company's best retention numbers.
Shah said recruiting slowed “significantly” in 2025 before picking back up in the fourth quarter, and she attributed the ebbs to “the noise around what Osaic is doing,” with advisors questioning whether it made sense “to join a firm in its own transition.”
“I think there was just too much ambiguity over exactly what the firm was going to look like post-Journey to One,” she said. “What was the advisor experience going to be, and how positive was it going to be post-integration for advisors that had previously been with … a smaller wealth management platform?”
Greg Cornick, an executive vice president overseeing wealth solutions for the broker/dealer, said advisors’ organic growth can be depressed when they’ve been around for several years, and can hit a “point where they’re running a practice that’s a little bit stagnant.” To Cornick, the solution lay in a firm’s tech stack and platform.
“I think that’s kind of the key to their organic growth; are you creating the frictionless use of experience and tools with the platform provider like us to be able to feel confident that you can spend time growing your business,” he said. “But I think it’s an industry challenge, even more than just Osaic.”