Mercer buys a Columbus RIA to fill out its Ohio Valley grid

Mercer Advisors has bought NorthAvenue Financial Advocates, the Columbus RIA that Kristen Moosmiller founded in 2018 and now runs with Stephanie Bailey and a six-person support staff, dropping a women-led team into a regional practice that has grown from roughly $100 million in client assets in 2019 to more than $2.2 billion today, InvestmentNews reported. NorthAvenue's offering covers investment management and planning for taxes, trusts and estates, retirement, and insurance; the coverage does not state the firm's client assets or the purchase price, an omission that makes sense, because the value of this deal to Mercer is not the size of a single small book but the position the team occupies on a regional grid.

The grid in question runs across the Ohio Valley, where Ted Motheral, Mercer's executive managing partner for M&A partner development and a Cleveland-based executive, told InvestmentNews that NorthAvenue fits an initiative to add AUM and long-term partners across markets including Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Indianapolis. Motheral is one of three Mercer executives based in Ohio, joined by Chip Workman, the Ohio Valley regional partner, and Ben Kautz, who runs the East Division from Columbus. Those three executives are the infrastructure for an office list that now includes Cincinnati and Westerville, Ohio; Indianapolis; Pittsburgh; and Lexington and Louisville in Kentucky, each a point from which the next deal can be sourced, staffed, and integrated.

Motheral told InvestmentNews that Mercer's 2026 M&A is running at last year's pace and that he expects the firm to finish the year with 15 to 20 acquisitions. For a consolidator that already spans more than 1,700 employees across 120 locations, that volume matters less for any individual book of business than for what each deal adds to regional density, since more offices in a region make the next integration cheaper.

Denver-headquartered Mercer, majority owned by Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital, and Altas Partners, ranks among the most active RIA acquirers, and those owners are buying a repeatable process with the Ohio Valley as the template.

Mercer's Ohio Valley build-out is a bet on geography, the same logic this publication identified when Carlyle-backed MAI announced its two August acquisitions and entered Atlanta. MAI's move was about owning specific markets rather than merely accumulating assets; Mercer's version runs with a steadier cadence. The coverage gives no purchase price, and NorthAvenue's own asset figure does not appear, so the valuation has to be inferred from strategy: Mercer is paying for what a small team becomes inside a $110 billion platform with 120 locations, and the multiple is set by the seller's contribution to density.

A founder selling her practice has to answer for the team's future, and Mercer's regional structure gives that answer a local face, because three Ohio executives sit in the same cities as the sellers. That suggests integration risk runs lower than in a coast-to-coast rollup and makes the firm's recruiting pitch concrete rather than abstract.

NorthAvenue adds a demographic layer to the geography. Mercer formed a Women & Wealth unit in March to strengthen the firm's service to female clients and expand its base of female advisors, and Moosmiller described her team as predominantly women-led. Motheral told InvestmentNews that she has built a substantial clientele of women who are controlling family finances and want advisors who reflect their experience.

The demographic positioning is part of the acquisition pitch itself: a small team with a distinct clientele becomes a referral hub inside a larger platform, and a seller who sees her own client base reflected in the buyer has a concrete reason to sign. For a firm running 15 to 20 deals a year, that reason matters as much as the multiple.

The Ohio Valley shows the model working, with client assets in the region multiplied from roughly $100 million to more than $2.2 billion since 2019 and the office list grown in step. If Mercer actually closes 15 to 20 deals this year, the next NorthAvenue will be a team that already knows the regional partner's name.