Carson Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based registered investment advisor with more than $50 billion in assets under management, has acquired the 19-person Total Wealth Planning team of Cincinnati, bringing it into its Carson Wealth RIA.
Total Wealth, which has clients throughout the Midwest, oversees $1.45 billion in assets for clients the firm refers to as “quiet millionaires.” The fee-only RIA will rebrand as Carson Wealth and become Carson’s 34th wholly owned RIA within the group, with some team members receiving equity in the larger entity. Carson also has over 160 RIAs in its network division operating as 1099 independent contractors.
The True Wealth acquisition is Carson’s largest to date by wealth AUM. In 2023, it acquired a firm in Portland, Ore., with $5 billion in total assets, but only $700 million in wealth, with the rest being retirement assets under administration.
The deal further solidifies Carson as one of the most acquisitive RIAs in the sector. The firm, led by CEO Burt White, is majority-owned by founder and Chairman of the Board Omani Carson (formerly Ron), along with employee shareholders and private equity firm Bain Capital, which acquired a minority stake in 2021.
Michael Belluomini, senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions, said members of the Total Wealth team saw him speak at a conference and were interested in Carson’s approach to acquisitions and integration. They had a follow-up conversation, with Total Wealth eventually hiring boutique M&A shop Echelon Partners to explore a sale.
“We are really happy to be the firm that they selected,” Belluomini said. “This is a good example of a firm that brings a different level of sophistication to ours … there’s a lot of talented individuals that we think can play a larger role inside of the Carson family.”
The Total Wealth team
Total Wealth is a fee-based RIA led by managing partners and wealth advisors Robert Lemmons, who joined in 2010, Robert Siegmann, who joined in 1994, and David Wilder, who joined in 2000. The firm was founded in 1998 by Brett Wilder as the Financial Management Group, and it changed its name to Total Wealth in 2015.
The RIA chose Carson partly for its technology, tax and estate planning, and private client services, according to the announcement.
Belluomini said during the deal talks, they also discussed Carson’s history of coaching and mentoring advisors.
“In the first conversations, Rob and Dave were asking questions around our ability to mentor talent and our ability to pair up successful advisors with older advisors,” he said. “Talking about some of the work we were doing there and the ability for them to plug into a broader community across Carson was really, really exciting [to them].”
After they had already agreed to terms, Carson announced its inaugural mentorship program. The program, launched in November, partners Carson’s more experienced advisors with next-generation professionals at Carson Wealth.
In terms of Carson’s interest, Belluomini pointed to Total Wealth’s evolution as a firm, which included sharing equity outside of the founder group and conducting two M&A transactions of its own.
He said firms of similar size and scope will consider a parent firm in the coming years, as founders and their teams grapple with equity sharing and growth plans.
“I think we’ll continue to see this trend of firms that have gotten really, really successful,” he said. “They’ve hit an enterprise level or level of valuation that they probably never anticipated, and it would be very difficult for a G2 advisor of any color or stripe to buy off or fully acquire a firm like this—giving them the opportunity to be equitized at a larger firm like Carson … that’s a really compelling story to somebody that maybe is fully invested in a local enterprise versus a larger national enterprise like Carson.”
The move for Total Wealth is Carson’s 22nd of 2025—the most transactions it has ever done in a year. Belluomini said Carson’s practice of obtaining positive consent from clients for a transaction helps to ultimately speed up the integration process by transferring assets within a roughly 26- to 28-day period. He said that larger deals, such as Total Wealth, however, require more effort and resources.
“We are being thoughtful as we approach the market for ’26, just realizing that if we do more multi-billion deals, and fewer $500 million deals, it’s a different ratio of support, and we want to make sure that we’re well-staffed and well-prepared for that,” he said.
