Wealth Enhancement Pens Largest Deal to Date With $22B RWA
Wealth Enhancement, an acquisitive Minneapolis-based registered investment advisor, is set to make its largest acquisition to date by agreeing to acquire RWA Wealth Partners, a Boston-based, women-led RIA with more than $22 billion in client assets.
If the deal closes as expected in the fourth quarter, Wealth Enhancement will have more than $187.1 billion in client advisory, trust and brokerage assets.
RWA Wealth Partners is led by CEO and Chief Economist Michelle Knight and is headquartered in Boston, with five additional offices across Massachusetts, California, Illinois and Michigan. The firm focuses on family office and private wealth services, including trust, estate, tax and family governance.
Private equity firm Summit Partners, which owns RWA Partners, will exit its position through the transaction. Wealth Management had reported in late 2025 that the Boston-based PE firm was seeking to sell its stake.
After closing, Knight and her other senior leaders, J.P. Powers, Nicole LaChapelle and Kristin Fazio, will continue to work with clients as part of Wealth Enhancement Reserve, the RIA’s division for families with “complex, multigenerational wealth” that have at least $25 million in investable assets.
RWA’s advisors working with individuals will fold into Wealth Enhancement’s advisor teams model, with RWA President Steve Reder overseeing those teams.
Wealth Enhancement CEO Jeff Dekko said in a statement that the move is being made in part to expand the firm’s services for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.
“Its established family office capabilities add depth to how we serve ultra-high-net-worth clients with deep specialization in trusts and estates, tax-aware planning, and the seamless coordination required to turn advice into action,” he said.
Summit took a controlling stake in Newtown, Mass.-based Adviser Investments in late 2020. Adviser Investments acquired similarly sized Ropes Wealth Advisors in 2023 and later rebranded the combined entity as RWA Wealth Partners. Knight had been the president and chief economist of Ropes Wealth Advisors before taking the CEO role of the rebranded firm.
“Joining forces with Wealth Enhancement gives our teams access to the scale, resources and breadth of a large national firm while allowing us to continue delivering the highly personalized, authentic advice our clients expect,” Knight said in a statement.
Wealth Enhancement has been one of the most active RIA acquirers in 2026, adding two RIAs earlier this week with combined assets of about $721 million.
Sources familiar with discussions have also recently said that the firm’s majority owners, TA Associates and Onex Corporation, are shopping their stakes among bidders Bain Capital and The Carlyle Group. Wealth Enhancement and the potential buyers have declined to comment.
Last week, consultancy and investment bank DeVoe & Company cautioned at its annual deal summit that a record M&A pace for the RIA sector may be stalling. Firm analysts said that, as of Sept. 22, there were 72 RIA transactions during the quarter, down 19% from the same period in 2025, and attributed the decline to macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, as well as the market volatility that followed.
