Transition Announcement: $1.3B UBS Team Joins Ascend Advisory Group Through Wells Fargo FiNet

After more than two decades at UBS, Jeff Cullman and Bruce Holt, CFP®, of The Cullman/Holt Group have joined Ascend Advisory Group, an independent practice affiliated with Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network (FiNet), in Dublin, Ohio. The seven-person team, which manages approximately $1.3B in client assets, made the move with a clear objective: Gain greater ownership and control over the business they had built while preserving the scale, investment capabilities and resources important to their clients. For Jeff and Bruce, the decision was less about what wasn’t working and more about what they wanted to build next.
 

A Successful Business and a Longer-Term Vision

Jeff and Bruce have worked together for more than two decades, building a highly successful ensemble practice recognized three times by Forbes as a Best-in-State Wealth Management Team. They were comfortable at UBS and deeply focused on serving clients. But as the industry evolved and changes at the firm created questions about its future direction, they began thinking more seriously about their own. Their goals became increasingly clear: Build an enterprise they could own, keep the team intact and growing, and create a path for the next generation. At the same time, one thing was non-negotiable throughout the process: Any move had to preserve their investment approach and ensure clients would not be disadvantaged by the change. That combination of priorities ultimately pointed them toward independence—but not necessarily toward building an independent firm entirely on their own.
 

Finding the Right Version of Independence

The Cullman/Holt Group runs a sophisticated investment practice, with a significant portion of client assets invested through separately managed accounts. That made manager access and competitive pricing particularly important. So were the resources of a major financial institution. Jeff and Bruce wanted the freedom and economics of independent ownership while maintaining access to lending, estate-planning expertise and other capabilities supported by a major bank. And culturally, they valued working alongside other ambitious advisors. They didn’t want greater autonomy to come at the expense of the camaraderie and intellectual exchange they enjoyed as part of a larger organization. Their evaluation included three firms in the independent broker dealer space as well as a deeper look at whether another employee model could provide enough autonomy to warrant a move. Ultimately, the combination of OSJ Ascend Advisory Group and Wells Fargo FiNet proved to be the right fit. Joining Ascend allowed the team to become independent business owners while plugging into an established practice with infrastructure, local support, and a community of like-minded advisors. FiNet provided the scale, SMA capabilities, bank lending resources, and broader platform they were looking to preserve. As Jeff described the decision: “The easiest way to explain Ascend is that we believe it gives us the best of both worlds. It has the scale and resources you’d expect from a much larger financial organization.” The culture mattered, too. Ascend offered the collaborative environment Jeff and Bruce wanted, with advisors sharing ideas and learning from one another while retaining the flexibility to build their businesses around their clients.
 

A Relationship More Than a Decade in the Making

Diamond Consultants’ relationship with Jeff began more than a decade ago, long before a transition was under consideration. Once or twice a year, Jeff and Louis Diamond would reconnect to discuss what was changing across the industry, what Diamond was seeing in the marketplace, and how the expanding landscape might be relevant to his business. Jeff was focused on running and growing the practice; Louis effectively served as his eyes and ears on the broader wealth management landscape. As circumstances at UBS began to change, those periodic conversations evolved into a much more active evaluation. Diamond Consultants led Jeff and Bruce through an extensive educational process to explore different versions of independence and determine which, if any, could materially improve what they already had. Drawing on more than a decade of conversations and a detailed self-assessment of their goals, it became clear that only a move into the independent space would create enough meaningful change to warrant a transition. From there, Diamond Consultants worked alongside the team throughout the process—helping evaluate firms and models, map their investment managers and capabilities across platforms, answer questions as they arose, keep the process moving, and support negotiations with Wells Fargo and other firms under consideration. But perhaps the most important role was the simplest: being a sounding board and an advocate firmly in their corner. With so many variables to weigh, Jeff and Bruce had an objective partner who understood their business, knew what they had spent decades building, and could continually bring the conversation back to what they were ultimately trying to achieve.
 

Building for What Comes Next

The Cullman/Holt Group’s transition illustrates an increasingly important reality about independence: Advisors don’t have to choose between owning their business and having access to significant resources and support. For Jeff and Bruce, the right answer was a model that let them take greater control of the enterprise they spent decades building, without taking responsibility for every aspect of running it themselves. Ascend and FiNet offered that balance, along with the infrastructure to keep the team growing and build toward the future. Diamond Consultants is grateful to have guided Jeff, Bruce, and The Cullman/Holt Group through this important next chapter and looks forward to watching what they build from here.