A Miami RIA funds partner buy-ins with appreciation rights

David Savir, co-founder and CEO of Element Pointe Family Office, and partner Carlos Dominguez have built the succession mechanism most RIAs keep in the abstract: an equity appreciation rights plan that lets key team members share in the firm's growth, then use the cash from that appreciation to pay for a real partnership stake. Element Pointe oversees almost $1.6 billion in assets under advisement for 50 client households, and the whole operation runs on 11 people; Savir described the plan on the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, explaining that the firm needed a path to partnership for the next generation and a way to make that path affordable.

The structure works in two stages. Key team members receive appreciation rights that vest over three to four years, and the cash those rights earn becomes the funding for a later buy-in; after that buy-in, the new partner holds outright equity, voting rights, and a place at the management table—a sequence that lets the firm test a person with economic exposure before handing over governance.

The bank channel's familiar retention answer is the recruiting loan and its clawback—a $5.6 million reminder, as this publication has covered, of the cost of leaving. Element Pointe runs the reverse, paying the next generation first in the firm's own appreciation and then in actual ownership; for a fee-only RIA that plans to stay independent, that cap-table work separates firms that end up sold from firms that get to choose their buyers.

The equity plan rests on eight years Savir and Dominguez spent narrowing the clientele to high- and ultra-high-net-worth households and dialing back on emerging-wealth prospects, an effort that supported a service stack now combining financial planning and family-office work with portfolio management and direct relationships with private equity and private credit firms instead of alternative-investment platforms. In 2024, against the industry's fee-compression narrative, Element Pointe is raising advisory fees—the logical result of a firm that thinks it delivers more value than the market currently prices.

Savir's own path runs through the premium end of the bank channel: an MBA and law background, then Goldman Sachs, then JPMorgan, where he built an ultra-high-net-worth practice on the firms' brands before breaking away to build his own. The plan reads as a direct answer to the bank-channel problem he left behind.

The liftout has become the default succession plan for bank-channel teams, and every $1 billion breakaway resets the payout grid for the next one; Element Pointe is running a quieter version of the same insight, building the ownership path on its own cap table before a buyer does it for the firm.

When the first cohort's vesting dates arrive, the industry will see whether the appreciation-rights route produces partners or just payouts. The advisors who join in the next two years are the cohort that decides which, and they are watching whether the firm issues new grants before the first checks clear.