Elevation Point, the investment firm launched in 2024 by Jim Dickson, has received a minority investment and an expanded credit facility from Merchant Investment Management, a New York-based private partnership that provides growth capital and other support to independent financial services firms.
As part of the deal, Emigrant Partners, Emigrant Bank’s RIA capital and advisory services arm, has exited its investment.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Dickson said it included a “significant increase” in its delayed draw term loan.
Dickson, CEO of the Minneapolis-based self-styled “accelerator” for RIAs, told Wealth Management in June that the firm would seek an additional capital infusion, as it pursues the goal of hitting $50 billion in the next two years. Since inception in 2024, Elevation Point has invested in 15 advisory firms representing $18 billion in client assets under supervision. This quarter alone, the firm will make investments in firms with $6 billion in total assets.
Just last week, the firm took a minority stake in Cleros Wealth Partners, a new RIA with $3.61 billion in client assets, that came out of UBS.
Dickson said his firm has had a wonderful partnership with Emigrant, which brought the expertise and capital to fuel some of its early growth. But as the firm has grown more rapidly than expected, it needs more capital to continue that growth.
“We have a business model that’s been incredibly well received in the marketplace,” Dickson said. “But as Elevation Point started to gain more and more momentum, we knew we were going to need more capital. We’ve known that for a while … but based on my experience in the space, I wanted to take my time and find the right partner.”
As the firm started to work through that, Elevation Point decided that the best path forward was to give Emigrant a great return on its investment and bring in a single partner into the cap table.
“[Emigrant] came in early when this was more of a concept than the proven concept it is today and helped us build structure and brought capital,” Dickson said. “We knew from the beginning that once we got to a certain amount of capital, that probably was their max. We just got there a little quicker, I think, than we thought we would, which is a great problem to have.”
Emigrant purchased a minority stake in Elevation Point in May 2025, aiming to get exposure to the breakaway advisor market.
Liz Nesvold, chair of Emigrant Partners, said her firm knew going in that the investment would be shorter than its typical hold. Emigrant is a long-term, non-governance capital partner, with its longest investment at 19 years and counting, so this was atypical.
“When we partnered with Jim Dickson and his team, we shared a clear ambition: help Elevation Point go from start-up to scale while preserving its entrepreneurial spirit,” Nesvold said in a statement. “Accelerated growth requires a platform and people that can support it, and Elevation Point has both. We were great partners to one another and crushed every goal we set in a remarkably short period.”
Elevation Point will continue using Emigrant’s family office services, which include bill pay, CFO services, family education and governance, trust services, art curation, financing and appraisal, among other things.
Similar to Elevation Point and Emigrant, Merchant’s model also involves taking minority stakes in RIAs. But Dickson said he doesn’t see Merchant as competition, given his firm’s focus on large breakaway teams. Further, it sources some 70% of its own deals.
“I don’t really look at it as a competitor,” he said. “I look at somebody who really knows what we’re doing really, really well, just like Emigrant did, who can help us do it better.”
Merchant now has more than 145 partner firms in five countries, managing more than $500 billion in assets. The firm was founded in 2017 by Marc Spilker, Tim Bello, Scott Prince, Rick D’Amico, Glen Chesir, Bryan Staff and David Mrazik.
