Quad-A CEO Sheena Gray says succession planning must include ownership transfer

Sheena Gray, chief executive of Quad-A, the Association of African American Financial Advisors, says firms treat two questions as one: who will run the firm, and who will own it.

In an Oct. 9 InvestmentNews interview, Gray said firms routinely confuse succession readiness with talent development. "Succession cannot simply be a conversation about who inherits the clients," she said. "It also has to be a conversation about who has the opportunity to own the businesses serving them."

Gray, a J.P. Morgan veteran who took the helm of Quad-A in 2024, said the work should start earlier. "Succession should not be treated as an exit strategy," she said. "It should be part of the business strategy from the beginning."

Starting early, she said, creates more options for the owner, protects the value of the business and gives clients greater confidence in its future. The tasks include training future leaders, writing down key processes, bringing successors into client relationships and planning how equity will change hands.

The value at stake sits with the founder. "If the owner holds the majority of the client relationships, business development and institutional knowledge, the value of the practice becomes much more difficult to transfer," Gray said.

Client retention is the other half of the problem. "Clients are not simply transferring assets from one advisor to another," she said. "They are deciding whether they trust someone new with their family, their goals and often decades of financial history."

Gray said the industry rarely addresses openly who gets the chance to own the business. Talented younger advisors, and particularly Black financial professionals, have historically been developed as practitioners without being invited into conversations about equity, valuation or business ownership, according to the interview.

BNY Wealth research cited in this publication's September coverage of Wilmington Trust's Marguerite Weese showed just under 50% of sellers prepared for diligence.