The latest corporate transactions, mergers and partnerships in the North American wealth management space.

Fusion Family Wealth, Merchant Investment Management
Merchant Investment Management has continued its run of partnerships and stake acquisitions by teaming up with Fusion Family Wealth, which concentrates on behavioral-based wealth planning strategies and investment.

Founded in 2013, Fusion manages more than $1 billion in assets for private households, as well as 401,000 retirement plans for professional service organizations with a particular focus on accounting and law firms.

The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. 

Merchant has started 2022 with a flourish of M&A deals and partnerships. Last week, for example, it partnered with Summit Investment Advisory Services. Pennsylvania-based River Wealth Advisors (RWA) also recently closed a minority investment partnership with Merchant.

In the case of the Fusion deal, the partnership brings Fusion into Merchant’s community of partner firms, who will be able to tap into Fusion’s behavioral finance expertise. The field of behavioral finance, which seeks to guide clients by an understanding of biases and human psychology, has grown as a domain over recent years.

“The team at Fusion has built a behavioral finance engine that could only come from the RIA world,” Tim Bello, managing partner at Merchant, said.

Merchant is a private partnership providing growth capital, management resources, strategic opportunities and direction to independent financial services companies, particularly those focused on wealth and asset management. It is a minority investor in RIAs and RIA-affiliated businesses and represents a network of independent advisors with approximately $100 billion in client investment assets under management. The firm also operates as an RIA lender and has an affiliated asset manager. It describes itself as "principally aligned growth partners," according to its website.