Ten Capital Investment Advisors LLC, a young independent financial advisory company co-founded by a longtime veteran of the industry, has grown substantially this year in terms of assets under management. 

Meantime, the company has formed a strategic partnership with Inland Northwest Bank, of Spokane, through which Ten Capital will handle investment management services for the bank’s clients. 

Tim Mitrovich, Ten Capital’s CEO, says the company has added $48 million to its assets under management this year, as of late October. As of early November, the company had more than $180 million in assets under management. He, with 48-year industry veteran Kurt Orton and Kelli Thompson, started the business in early 2012 with $100 million in assets under management.

Jacob Timm, Ten Capital’s vice president and director of retirement planning, says that nationally, “You’re seeing more of a shift toward independents. We like to think, in some ways, we’re leading that in the Spokane market.”

Ten Capital is located about 6,000 square feet of floor space on the skywalk level of the Chase Financial Center, at 601 W. Main. 

The company currently has 13 employees, including nine financial advisers. Mitrovich says the company is talking to a few other financial advisers about coming on board there, but he says those talks are in their early stages.

The company’s services include investment management, private-wealth management, corporate-retirement plan management, and other types of financial planning. Mitrovich says it works with a broad range of investments, including stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and international investments. It has expertise in 401(k) retirement plans and 529 education plans, among others.

The company’s average client has $150,000 in investable assets, though under some circumstances, its advisers take on clients who have fewer assets. 

“We certainly want to be there for the young professional,” Mitrovich says. “We don’t just want to be there at the finish line.”

The vast majority of the company’s clients are in the Inland Northwest, though it has some elsewhere in the Northwest as well as in Phoenix, Chicago, and other metropolitan areas. Most of its relationships outside of the area, however, started when a client who lived here moved elsewhere.

Ten Capital currently is ramping up its strategic partnership with Inland Northwest Bank. The company already managed INB’s 401(k) plan, and it formalized the partnership to handle investment services in June.

Mark Dresback, chief revenue officer at INB, says the bank is referring its customers to Ten Capital when they seek help with investments, and he expects Ten Capital to refer business to the bank as well. The partnership includes a revenue-sharing element, in which INB receives a portion of the revenue generated by business it refers to Ten Capital.

“We intend for it to be a mutually beneficial relationship,” Dresback says.

He says all community banks eventually have to address how they will handle investment services for their clients. Some, he says, hire advisers and keep it in-house, while others keep a referral network of a number of investment advisory firms. INB, which has 11 branches in the Spokane area and North Idaho, chose to align with Ten Capital because it feels as though the two companies share similar values, Dresback says. 

“We have high expectations and anticipation of a great relationship going into the future,” he says.

The 25-year-old bank had talked earlier about adding investment-management services in some manner, but it focused on its core services during the Great Recession.

“As we come out of that, we ask, ‘Are we doing everything we can to serve our clients’ needs?’.”

Mitrovich says the partnership is exclusive, and Ten Capital won’t be seeking similar relationships with other banks. He says, however, the company is talking about forming similar partnerships with companies in other industries, such as large accounting firms. 

Ten Capital’s compensation for the services it provides is fee based, rather than commission based. Mitrovich says it typically charges a fee of 1 percent of total value of assets under management, although high net-worth clients, in some cases, pay a smaller percentage. 

He says the company makes more money only if a client’s assets under management grow, which “puts us on the same side of the table as them.”

He adds, “When the client succeeds, we succeed. When the client struggles, we struggle.”

Orton, who worked at Spokane-based Richards, Merrill & Peterson Inc. investment advisory firm for 37 years before co-founding Ten Capital, says he saw a need to switch to a fee-based approach after the Great Recession.

During the economic downturn, he says he saw the need to diversify clients’ portfolios to a greater extent than he was able to do under a commission-based structure, under which advisers often work with a group of mutual funds offered by just one company.  

“Now, I’m able to use multiple fund families,” Orton says. “My strategy has been to take advantage of the best talent here (in the U.S.) and internationally.”

Orton says he started the firm with his oldest daughter, Thompson, and Mitrovich, a former Whitworth University quarterback and Rhodes Scholar finalist who earned a law degree from University of Washington, because he wanted to have a succession plan for the book of business he had built. 

Now 71 years old, Orton says clients began asking him when he was going to retire and who would manage their investments when he wasn’t able to do so any longer. 

While he says he doesn’t have plans to retire, he wanted to build a team that included younger advisers with whom his clients could work when he leaves the industry.

“Nobody wants an adviser who isn’t paying attention to the future,” Orton says.

Orton first met Mitrovich, 37, when he was an intern at Richards, Merrill & Peterson, and he describes the younger adviser’s grandfather, late Vera Water & Power executive Joe Custer, as someone who had been a great friend. 

“The more I talked to (Mitrovich), the more convinced I became” of the decision to start a firm with him. 

Custer died during the fall before the trio started Ten Capital, and the “10” in the company’s name refers to Custer’s football jersey number from high school.

He says he believes one strength of the company is the diversity in age of its advisers.

“We have someone from every decade in our firm,” Mitrovich says. “The big thing we see and hear is, ‘this is a firm I can be with for 30 years.’”