Wealth-management consultant to CPA affiliates ties in with insurance agency. iPro One, a wealth-management platform provider to, and an investor in, CPA-affiliated investment advisories, has entered into a joint venture with insurance agency American Business & Professional Program to provide insurance products and services to CPA-owned RIAs.

"Insurance solutions are a critical tool that financial planners need to consider when offering wealth management services," says iPro One's CEO Anthony Wood. "The benefit of iPro One and American Business joining forces is that CPA firms can overlay insurance solutions on both the tax and wealth-management side of the CPA practice and also make it easier for the firms to offer sophisticated insurance solutions and continue to position CPAs as the most trusted advisor to high net-worth clients."

Case design 

iPro One, which is one-quarter owned by Houston-based investment bank Sanders Morris Harris, provides operations support and related consulting services to CPA-owned wealth managers. In a ddition to a roster of outsource-only clients, it began taking minority-ownership stakes in its institutional clients this year. To date it has bought into HbK Sorce Financial, the wealth-management subsidiary of Alliance, Ohio-based CPA Hill, Barth & King, and Tegra Financial Partners, an affiliate of Atlanta-based accountancy Habif, Arogeti & Wynne.

HbK Sorce Financial principal Christopher Sorce says the CPAs have a tradition of outsourcing insurance products for their private clients. "We have enhanced our offerings through expanding our access to both insurance case-design programs and sophisticated risk-management insurance products," he adds.

In addition to providing insurance products, New York-based American Business has trust and estate attorneys on staff to assist CPA firms.

New York-based iPro One has been lining up partnerships lately. In recent months it has signed on with third-party investment-research and performance-reporting provider Fortigent and selected Advisor Software Inc.'s ASI Client Acquisition Solution, a client-proposal and tax-aware portfolio-diagnostics application to help its institutional clients and partner firms make more of end-client relationships. -FWR

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