Sowell Management, a registered investment advisor based in North Little Rock, Ark., with more than $6.5 billion in assets under management, has launched a new division focused on households with $5 million or more in net worth.
Cache River Private Wealth aims to provide advanced planning, investment and marketing support for advisors serving clients with multi-generational wealth. Bill Sowell, the firm’s founder, who recently stepped down as CEO to lead strategy, said the new division will reflect a shift in client focus to “high-net-worth plus” families seeking a broader, more comprehensive service.
“What I’ve seen as a financial advisor, and in our business working with all the advisors we do, is that needs have changed,” Sowell said. “Not just necessarily the fact that people have more investable assets, but their expectations from a financial advisor have changed.”
Sowell differentiated the division from a family office, which might wade into areas such as helping ultra-high-net-worth individuals buy vacation homes. Rather, he and the firm see strong demand for “family office lite” services focused on multi-generational stewardship.
“In the last several years, there has been much more of a focus on legacy planning,” he said. “It’s easy for us to talk about taxes and estate planning, but you know, how does this impact my family, and how does it impact just my legacy going forward? I think it has evolved in a much healthier realm where it just seems to be more of a family focus, as opposed to just an individual with a lot of money and just trying to plan and execute for that person.”
The new division will let existing Sowell advisors access “advanced planning” capabilities across investments to estate planning, business succession, and tax strategies.
It will also serve as a new inorganic growth channel for Sowell for advisors specializing in the $5 million or more client space who are looking to join a larger firm.
To that end, Sowell said it has hired Rob Emrich III as chief growth officer for the new unit. Emrich leaves his position as managing partner of Accruence Capital, where he was a founder. Sowell said he has known Emrich for over a decade and that he brings years of experience in working with wealthy clients.
This year, a number of RIAs have leaned into family office services, either through newly named divisions or by hiring new leaders to build out the service. In April, RIA Farther announced it had hired Ben Seidenstein, a former Goldman Sachs private wealth advisor, to lead a new multi-family office division. Earlier this year, the $3 billion RIA Summit Wealth Group made a similar move, hiring an advisor to launch a new family office division, and $580 billion RIA Wealthspire formally launched a family office practice targeting UHNW clients.
Sowell Management has grown over the years to include more than 50 advisor partner firms. It is majority-owned by Bill Sowell and his wife, Cindy, who is the firm’s executive vice president.
Sowell handed over the CEO role to Daryl Seaton in January as part of what the firm called a long-term succession plan. Seaton had been with the firm since 2020 as chief operating officer and was made president in 2023.
Sowell, who speaks and writes on succession planning in the RIA industry, said stepping down from the CEO role has freed him to work on projects such as the launch of Cache River.
“For me to be able to step out of the day-to-day management of the company as CEO, and be able to focus on things just like this and growing the firm, that’s what I enjoy, that’s what I’m good at,” he said.
