Scott MacKillop, who sold his pioneering flat-fee turnkey asset management platform First Ascent Asset Management to GeoWealth in 2023 and continued with the company as a strategic advisor, left the firm earlier this week.
In an interview with WealthManagement.com, MacKillop said he and his team spent much of last year integrating First Ascent into GeoWealth, and that work is now done.
“There clearly wasn’t going to be the kind of role that was going to be meaningful to me going forward,” he said.
MacKillop pioneered a flat-fee pricing model for turnkey asset management when he founded First Ascent in 2016. He said at the time it “didn’t seem fair” that RIAs paid asset managers a percentage of AUM when it cost those managers no more to run a $1 million portfolio than it did a $100,000 account.
First Ascent would go on to acquire an account opening technology platform and launch a series of ESG portfolios, among other iterations. MacKillop said he and his team sold the firm to GeoWealth in 2023 because his company needed a “modern technology platform that could accommodate the increasing demands of advisors for flexibility and customization,” according to a LinkedIn post.
At the time of the sale, GeoWealth’s CEO Colin Falls said First Ascent brought a high level of investment consulting and services to full-service RIAs which would complement his firm’s focus on enterprise technology. First Ascent had some 80 RIAs on the platform and $1.4 billion in assets when GeoWealth acquired it.
“Over nine years ago my colleagues and I started First Ascent, the first flat fee TAMP. We had no track-record, no AUM, and no funding—just a little friends and family money,” MacKillop wrote on LinkedIn. “It’s time for my next professional adventure.”
He says he’s currently exploring opportunities, whether that be a full-time or part-time position or serving on a board. He said he does not expect to start another company on his own.
“There are good guys and bad guys out there in the financial services world, in a real black-and-white way of looking at it,” he said. “I want to find someone who’s doing something that’s really positive for their clients and helps advisors, and is less focused on growing something big and making lots of money doing it.”
Prior to launching First Ascent in 2016, MacKillop served as president for eight years at Denver-based Frontier Asset Management. He sold his ownership interest back to the firm in 2015 after a disagreement with other executives over its direction.