The breakaway that left Raymond James now buys its teams

Concurrent Investment Advisors, the Tampa platform that broke away from Raymond James in 2022, has acquired Winstone Wealth Partners, a Houston firm founded by CEO Jeff Green, bringing more than $425 million in client assets onto its 1099 affiliation platform from Raymond James’s employee channel.

The addition takes Concurrent past $23 billion in assets under management and administration, a total built from the $21 billion it reported in the first half, roughly $2 billion added through acquisition, and now Winstone’s book on top. Five professionals come with the Houston team: Green, partner Lauren Smith, and advisors John Grover, Robert Burks and Dylan Daggett, joining the 25 advisors Concurrent added in the first six months of 2026, and the firm keeps its own name.

CEO Nate Lenz framed the move as “a continued reflection of our team’s commitment to building a platform where advisor entrepreneurs can scale on their own terms and keep their client relationships at the center of the business,” while Green struck the same theme: “From day one, it was evident that Concurrent would empower us to build the independent firm we envision for our team and for the families we serve.”

The hire matters less for its size than for who is doing the recruiting: Concurrent was built by people with Raymond James careers behind them, and since 2022 it has turned that familiarity into a pipeline, repeatedly signing teams out of its former employer — Winstone is the latest instance rather than an isolated one. Familiarity of that sort likely shortens the courtship, because branch economics need less explaining than they would to a stranger, though the platform still has to answer the question every independent team asks before signing: what does the home office actually do that the team cannot do for itself?

Concurrent is majority-owned by its employees, with a minority stake held by Merchant Investment Management and a program of minority investments in other RIAs. That structure shows up in the Winstone terms, where the Houston firm keeps its name and gains the resources to pursue acquisitions of its own, a role a brand-consolidating acquirer would have little reason to allow and one that gives Concurrent a Houston presence with the operator already in place.

The wager inside that structure is client retention: a team that moves under its own banner asks clients to follow a name and faces they already know, while a team absorbed into an acquirer’s brand asks them to accept a new letterhead. Concurrent’s offer is continuity, and Winstone’s decision to keep the name is what that looks like when it works.

The roll-up premium has moved from AUM to the people who keep clients after the close, and Concurrent’s home-office investment across onboarding, operations, compliance, investment solutions and the rest is that argument with a budget line attached. Lenz frames his side of it as bringing “capabilities and strategic support to the table that strengthen firms like Winstone, without diminishing what makes them distinct.”

PWD’s records list Concurrent at $15.7 billion in regulatory assets as of mid-September against the $23 billion it now counts in assets under management and administration, two measures that do not reconcile; the same records show 187 employees and 60 reps. Against that base, $425 million is a modest addition, but the pace is not: 25 advisors joined in six months, and the Houston firm plans to add assets by acquisition with the platform’s backing.

According to the most recent Wolfe Research analysis, the St. Petersburg firm trailed only LPL Financial in net advisor wins through Aug. 23, which makes a single $425 million Houston team look like a rounding error against its intake. In August, we covered Raymond James losing $545 million as two California teams went to Wells Fargo’s FiNet, and Raymond James answered quickly by hiring a Wells Fargo veteran going the other way; the round-robin is old news by now.

The difference here is the source of the recruiter. At the end of August we argued that liftouts had moved from wirehouse exits to independent platforms raiding each other; here the raider is a platform born inside the firm being raided, and its recruiters can describe the alternative from experience rather than from a pitch deck. Every team that makes that move lowers the floor for the next, because the reference list grows and the story becomes easier to check. Raymond James’s net-win lead through late August is real, but it is being defended against an alumni network that speaks its language and no longer needs its infrastructure.

The test is whether the model travels past the founders it lands. Concurrent’s own recent history suggests the appetite is there: after reaching $21 billion in the first half, it added $2 billion by acquisition rather than waiting on organic growth, and Winstone now intends to spend some of the platform’s capacity pursuing deals of its own. Watch the second-half advisor count. Matching the first half’s 25 would say the pipeline through Raymond James is wider than one Houston firm; falling short would say the founder’s exit is still the easier sale.