By Mukundan Sivaraj · AIM Media House
Wealth management has a concentration problem. Firms managing over $1 billion in assets represent just 22% of the market but control nearly 88% of total industry assets. Scale has long given larger firms a structural advantage, and smaller firms have generally operated at a disadvantage as a result.
Sowell Management, a $6 billion RIA based in North Little Rock, Arkansas, is responding with a significant technology investment. The firm has partnered with custodial platform Altruist to roll out Hazel, Altruist's AI platform, across the firm.
The goal, in CEO Daryl Seaton's words, is to give Sowell's advisors the tools to "compete on a level playing field with larger practices." The firm has grown quickly.
Client assets, a figure that includes both assets under management and administration, jumped 36% in 18 months, from $4.4 billion in March 2024 to $6 billion by September 2025.
Falling Behind on Tech Has a Cost According to a Advisor360°'s report , 93% of firms that rated their technology as state-of-the-art reported winning clients from competitors with weaker tech.
In the same survey, 58% of advisors said they had lost new business in the previous year specifically because of poor technology. For a firm like Sowell, which has staked its growth pitch on giving mid-sized advisors a competitive edge, those numbers make the Altruist partnership important for client acquisition.
The broader data supports. Cerulli research found that nearly 30% of tech-heavy advisory practices achieved above-average growth over three years, compared to just 9% of low-tech peers.
Sowell's own trajectory, with client assets growing 36% in 18 months, from $4.4 billion to $6 billion, already tracks closer to the tech-heavy cohort.
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