A wealth management advisor in the Midwest is hunting for SMA shops to team up with and bring into the ETF space.

John Mark Creekmur Creekmur Wealth Advisors / Euclid Investment Advisory, LLC Founder / Principal

"There's a lot of excellent, boutique, quality RIAs out there with separately managed accounts," John Creekmur, founder of Morton, Illinois-based Creekmur Wealth Advisors, tells MFWire. "We've already had conversations with a number of firms ... We're always looking for different RIA firms out there that do things differently."

Though he has previously acquired some RIAs, last year Creekmur made a new kind of alliance, investing in Bethesda, Maryland-based Euclid Investment Advisory, a 21-year-old separately managed account firm, and he became a principal there. Then last month, Creekmur unveiled Euclid's first ever ETF, the actively managed Euclid Capital Growth ETF. Tidal ETF Services and Foreside Fund Services are two of the vendors on the ETF.

Looking ahead, Creekmur aims to make more alliances to help bring SMA shops' strategies into the ETF space. They're specifically targeting smaller RIAs with: less than $1 billion in AUM each; "very clear methodology"; "specific, logic-driven processes"; and good stories. Geography, on the other hand, is not a big concern for future partnerships, Creekmur says.

"We have the ability to work with folks really anywhere," Creemur says.

Creekmur also plans to work with Euclid on more ETFs, too. They have "three or four more ETF ideas on the drawing board," based on current Euclid SMA strategies, and he expects to launch them within the next 12 months or so. The ETF they rolled out last month is positioned as a core holding, Creekmur says, so future ones may be designed as satellite approaches. 

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