With Corporate Wing Sold, Legacy Capital Goes Beyond Cold-Calling

(Legacy Capital)

Never mind whether the rich are like us. Their financial concerns are definitely different.

Just ask Matt Jones, CEO of Legacy Capital Group of Little Rock, which sold a major part of its business last month to focus on serving the “affluent and ultra-affluent” in Arkansas and beyond.

Legacy, which also has an office in northwest Arkansas, sold its corporate benefits business to OneDigital Health & Benefits of Atlanta in late July without disclosing financial terms. One goal was doubling down on Legacy’s focus, Jones said, speaking out expansively on the sale for the first time.

“We were refining our focus, and we’ll be working exclusively on our role as a high-end boutique wealth-management firm,” Jones told Arkansas Business last week. “Really wealthy people have different kinds of problems and therefore need different kinds of services. Everybody wants to be wealthy, but most don’t realize that very rich people do have problems; whatever keeps you up at night are your problems.”

The firm, which had 32 employees before the sale and has 12 now, specializes in discovering the detailed interests and worries of clients and advising them on the “consequences and impact of wealth,” rather than simply offering an array of investment and tax-structure options.

Jones, a Searcy native with a law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Bowen School of Law, hopes to attract talented advisers from bigger companies like Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

His growth plan for the next two to four years includes snagging top “wirehouse” earners who may be daunted by the logistics of starting their own firms but are eager to serve clients more personally. “At massive public companies, everything starts with earnings, and their framework incentivizes doing things that help the firm’s bottom line. We deal in personal relationships. With us, advisers can get with a client-centric firm that’s already established, and make more money with the same amount of business because we don’t have the cost structure of the larger firms. We want to be a landing spot.”

Legacy relies on a network of tax lawyers and accountants to build relationships, Jones said. “When you’re working with the type of clientele we serve, you don’t get them through cold-calling.”