HB Wealth adds Podnos physician team, entering Texas as its seventh market

Texas is HB Wealth's seventh market, and the Atlanta firm is entering it with a three-person advisory team whose practice has served physicians since 2002. Steven D. Podnos, Rachel Podnos O'Leary and Lauren Podnos-Garner — the father-daughter trio behind Wealth Care LLC, the fee-only RIA Podnos founded — have joined the firm, which announced Thursday that the three will establish its Austin presence. InvestmentNews first reported the additions.

That reporting describes a practice organized around what a medical career does to a household's finances: liability exposure, asset protection, estate planning and the administrative demands of running or exiting a practice. Podnos spent years as a pulmonary and critical care physician before moving into wealth management, and he kept practicing critical care medicine in the Air Force Reserve until 2023. He holds an MD, an MBA and the CFP designation; O'Leary carries a JD and the CFP; Podnos-Garner is a CFP. Medicine is where the practice is deepest, though the trio also advises high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families across the country.

The firm is anchoring a market on three people. O'Leary and Podnos-Garner will be based in Austin full time, while Podnos splits his time between Austin and Cocoa Beach, Florida, so the team's most senior relationship will operate partly outside the office the firm is building around it.

"Joining HB Wealth represents an important next chapter for our clients and our team," Podnos said. "It allows us to preserve the independent, fiduciary approach that has always defined our work while expanding the depth of advice and resources we can bring to each relationship."

HB Wealth closed its purchase of Wealth Care on Sept. 30, terms undisclosed, and the $700 million Austin RIA became the firm's seventh market, PWD reported on Oct. 1. At roughly 2% of the buyer's assets, the purchase is small enough to absorb with a single advisory team and large enough to put a new state on the map. Divided three ways, $700 million works out to about $233 million of client assets per advisor, and that density is what platforms are paying for.

The firm dates to 1989, when it was founded as Homrich Berg, and now goes by HB Wealth. InvestmentNews calls it one of the country's largest fee-only registered investment advisers, and by the firm's own count it oversees more than $33 billion in assets across 13 offices and more than 360 employees, in Georgia, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and now Texas.

A regulatory snapshot dated Sept. 26, four days before the Wealth Care purchase closed, lists 26,148 accounts, 325 employees and $30.2 billion in regulatory assets. Divided by accounts, the average lands near $1.16 million — an account-level figure rather than a household one, and a fair description of the balance size HB Wealth is built around.

Thomas Carroll, the firm's chief executive, framed the hire as national rather than local. "Their addition establishes a strong foundation for us in Austin," he said. "This team will be pivotal in how we bring a valuable new dimension to the way we serve medical professionals nationwide."

A doctor's balance sheet is largely a practice that has to be valued, sold or wound down, and the planning that matters most hangs on that event: entity structure, liability exposure, the sale itself, the estate afterward. A practice that has worked that problem since 2002 arrives at HB Wealth with its client relationships intact and, likely, a referral pattern inside hospital systems and physician groups that a platform entering a new state would otherwise have to build from scratch. The coverage does not quantify how much of the firm's Texas growth is expected from those referrals. Carroll's word for the hire is "foundation," which concedes the office is something to build on.

That is the case for buying a niche instead of constructing one. Sowell took the other route in August, when it built an Advanced Planning Group in-house to anchor Cache River Private Wealth, its division for households with $5 million or more. Both approaches answer the same client demand for planning depth beyond portfolio management, with the purchase arriving faster and carrying revenue, and the internal build keeping control of the design. Which one compounds better over a decade is an open question, and the answer probably depends on whether the niche is the firm's identity or a product line.

For a founder-led practice, selling into a larger platform keeps the family in front of the clients, which is the retention outcome buyers are paying for. HB Wealth now has seven markets, 13 offices, more than 360 employees and a national pitch to physicians resting on three advisors in one Texas city. Whether the medical practice is a template the firm can repeat in its next new state, or a single well-built client base that does not travel, is the question that pitch now has to answer.