Texas Outfit in Rapid-Growth Mode Eyes NWA Expansion

CFO4Life LP, a boutique financial planning firm headquartered in the north Dallas suburb of Coppell, has partnered with financial adviser Jon Palfreeman of Springdale, and plans to have a local office up and running by the end of the year.

“No later than the first quarter of 2014,” said Levi McMellian, the firm’s managing director and CEO.

The company recently leased space in an office building at 211 N. Block Ave. in Fayetteville. Palfreeman will be the vice president of operations for CFO4Life’s Northwest Arkansas office.

“We will be transitioning my clients to CFO4Life, along with another adviser who will be immediately joining the firm,” said Palfreeman, who resigned Sept. 20 after seven years at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith in Rogers. “Out of the gate, we will be over $100 million in assets under management for the NWA office.”

CFO4Life, according to its website, was founded in 1981 with a background in public accounting. Its services have evolved to include financial planning and investment management services to high net worth individuals with complex planning services and corporate services.

In October 2012, CFO4Life became an SEC-registered RIA, ending a 14-year relationship with LPL Financial, the nation’s largest independent broker dealer. After the split, CFO4Life moved all its advisory assets to TD Ameritrade Institutional.

TD was actually the link that brought Palfreeman and CFO4Life together.

Palfreeman spent the last seven years at Merrill Lynch. He was happy there, but the itch to start his own business began to take hold in the spring of 2012.

“I had all these brilliant ideas,” he recalled, tongue-in-cheek. “I wanted to build my own business. I did not want to be [just] an adviser.”

After considering several options, Palfreeman determined that aligning his new business with TD would provide the lowest cost to his clients.

But as those conversations advanced, “TD Ameritrade told me to call Levi,” Palfreeman recalled.

Palfreeman eventually met with CFO4Life officials in Coppell. He was sold immediately that the business model would be a great fit for the Northwest Arkansas landscape, dotted with so many high net worth individuals and their burgeoning retirement plan accounts.

“Everything that was in my mind, they had already built out,” Palfreeman recalled about the initial meeting last spring. “They have the background intact.”

Said McMellian: “Jon’s way of thinking fit perfectly with ours, and we’ve always said we want to grow our business through alliances with the right people. It was a natural fit.”

CFO4Life currently has about $600 million under management and is clearly in rapid-growth mode. An article published in April at RIABiz.com noted the firm started the year with $452 million in assets, with a growth of 318 percent since 2009.

“Over the past ten years we have seen a growth rate of approximately 35 percent annually for our assets,” said McMellian, who was a member of the Dallas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class in 2011. “That’s a key metric that we follow.”

Currently, the company has 16 professionals including three certified financial planners, three certified public accountants and one chartered financial analyst.

The Northwest Arkansas office will be staffed to compete, McMellian said.

“We plan on making a considerable investment with a number of employees in the area,” he said.