A $425 million team prices independence against the employee channel

Advisors trying to price independence against an employee-channel seat got a benchmark this week when Winstone Wealth Partners, a Houston firm with more than $425 million in client assets, left Raymond James for Concurrent Investment Advisors' 1099 affiliation platform, bringing CEO Jeff Green, partner Lauren Smith and advisors John Grover, Robert Burks and Dylan Daggett along.

Concurrent is the counterweight worth studying. Spun out of Raymond James in 2022, the Tampa-based RIA platform now oversees more than $23 billion in client assets, up from $21 billion in total AUM in the first half of 2026 before it added another $2 billion through acquisition. Twenty-five advisors joined in that half, while the home office spent the period building out onboarding, operations, compliance, investment solutions and technology—the functions a 1099 team either buys from the platform or hires for itself. CEO Nate Lenz framed the hire as a commitment to “a platform where advisor entrepreneurs can scale on their own terms.” Filings put Concurrent's regulatory assets at $15.7 billion across 60 representatives, per WAD's records; the $23 billion headline counts assets under management and administration, which suggests a meaningful share of the platform total is administered rather than managed.

Ownership is the part of the offer advisors should read twice: employees hold the majority of Concurrent, Merchant Investment Management holds a minority stake, and the firm runs a program to take minority positions in other RIAs. Winstone keeps its name and plans to grow organically and pursue acquisitions using Concurrent's resources, and a $425 million team that intends to be a buyer is choosing a venue where it can be one—the equity it holds in the platform is the only line on the term sheet that can grow.

The aggregate still belongs to the incumbent: Raymond James logged the most net advisor wins through August 23 by the Wolfe Research tally, trailing only LPL Financial, while a week before this move a UBS team ended a two-year search at Raymond James' employee channel after weighing Rockefeller and LPL. The cap table now decides which firms land the largest teams, as this publication has argued, and the corollary this Houston exit tests is narrower—the employee channel's retention problem starts at the size where a team can buy rather than be bought.

Watch the buy side. Winstone says it will pursue inorganic growth with Concurrent's support, and the first practice it signs will price the platform's equity story for the next team at the same size.