United Capital Financial Partners envisions being in the top 25 US markets with a unified brand by 2013, says chief executive Joe Duran.

Creating a national wealth management advisory firm has long been the Holy Grail of the industry.

But attaining the fabled prize has proven to be elusive in the best of times, and even more daunting in the teeth of a recession.

Enter Joe Duran, chief executive of United Capital Financial Partners.

Duran scored big in the asset management business nine years ago when he played a key role in selling Centurian Capital Management to GE Financial, and he’s thinking big again.

Five years ago he founded United Capital as a roll-up firm that to date has acquired 23 registered investment advisory firms in nine states with a total of about $10 billion in assets under management.

By 2013, Duran envisions a national reach for the firm, with offices in the nation’s top 25 metropolitan markets under one brand name.

“We’ve changed our view of the world,” he said in an exclusive interview with Family Wealth Report. “We’re going to be adding new growth organically as well as by acquisition. We plan on being a national wealth counseling company with one operation, one culture, one platform and on one AVD form.”

Can Duran pull it off?

Possibly, but it won’t easy, say industry analysts.

“It may be a stretch, but it’s not unrealistic,” said Bing Waldert, director for Cerulli Associates, the Boston-based research firm. “I think a super-RIA firm is coming into play, the way successful national independent broker-dealer firms like Commonwealth were created 10 to 15 years ago. A national advisory firm is going to look more like Commonwealth than Merrill Lynch, but it’s not unattainable.”

“I think it’s a viable model,” said veteran industry observer Robert Ellis, principal of Fast Track Advisors, a financial services consulting firm. “The RIA business is just as amenable to scale as the broker-dealer business, in fact, even more so. But to become a national presence, a firm must invest in branding. That’s the big unknown, and it’s expensive.

“The reason on one has succeeded nationally is because firms never got the brand backing. So far United Capital has had no fatal miscues, but it has not invested in brand identity yet.”

Duran says that’s changing

“We’re re-branding now,” he pointed out, citing a unified name change to United Capital, a tag line (“Private Wealth Counseling’) and a positioning message (“honest conversations”).

United Capital has also hired Wechsler Ross & Partners, the New York-based financial services marketing specialist and Gregory FCA Communications, a public relations firm.

In addition to working on naming, branding and messaging issues, Wechsler Ross is working on affinity marketing arrangements for United Capital with professional associations whose members can use wealth management services.

“We’ve created an affinity relationship with three groups so far and expect to have ten by the end of the second quarter,” Duran said.

United Capital’s heart is in the right place, but execution of the strategy will be key, say marketing professionals.

“Their biggest challenge to achieving national recognition is to maintain a single brand, identification and message that’s consistent across every office,” said Marla Bace, partner and chief marketing officer for Brinton Eaton Wealth Advisors in Morristown, New Jersey. and the former head of global marketing, best practices for UBS. “They can’t allow local firms to position themselves without the national name and identity.”

(United Capital’s acquisition and expansion strategy will be discussed in the next edition of 'Family Wealth Report'.)