Maridea Wealth Management, a Brooklyn-based registered investment advisor founded in 2023, has joined other RIAs in bringing tax preparation and strategy in-house for clients, according to regulatory filings and its founder.
Maridea Tax & Business Services is now an affiliate entity of the RIA, created from the acquisition of a tax practice in California and a tax-strategy firm in Arizona, said founder and CEO Mier Wang.
“We believe that a comprehensive experience is necessary to compete and thrive in this market,” Wang wrote via email. “We wanted to in-house the tax strategy and tax preparation experience for individuals and businesses into Maridea.”
Maridea, with $1.2 billion in assets under management, is on the smaller end of firms that are choosing to offer not just tax strategy to clients but also actual tax preparation services as part of a more holistic wealth offering. One recent example is Soltis Investment Advisors, which now has over $14 billion in client assets and in April acquired tax and accounting firm GDM Private Financial Solutions to expand its tax preparation offerings.
Other firms, however, are choosing to partner for their tax preparation. In January, RIA acquirer Merit Financial Advisors made an acquisition that allowed it to partner with SSC CPAs + Advisors, a Topeka, Kan.-based accounting firm.
For its part, relatively smaller Maridea is also adding to the trend of RIAs offering multi-custodial options by adding Fidelity Investments in the first quarter. That move came after luring an LPL Financial team to the RIA that is repapering with Fidelity, with another former LPL practice set to do the same, Wang said.
“We had been in discussion with them for a long time, and we had been waiting for the right opportunity to kick off our relationship with Fidelity,” Wang wrote.
Fidelity is now Maridea’s second-largest custodian by assets behind Charles Schwab. The RIA also has custody options with AssetMark Trust, Interactive Brokers, and BNY Pershing.
Maridea is majority-owned by Wang, with minority stakes held by private equity firms 119th Street Capital and Pelican Capital.
