San Diego-based wealth advisory firm AlphaCore has expanded into the New York City region after acquiring Brave Family Advisors on July 1, adding $700 million in client assets and bringing the firm’s total to over $11 billion in assets under management.
Founded by Dick Pfister in 2015 with a single office in La Jolla, AlphaCore has been on an aggressive acquisition streak, purchasing six wealth management firms in the past two years. The Brave Family Advisors acquisition brings seven new employees, including two senior wealth advisors with 25 years of industry experience.
“Ever since I launched AlphaCore, we had clients in New York City that we’ve been servicing from our home base in La Jolla for over a decade,” Pfister said. “So naturally having advisors that are there in the surrounding areas made a lot of sense.”
Brave Family Advisors, based in Summit, New Jersey, was formed in 1992 by Brett Haire and Scott Morrison. The firm has served high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients in the greater New York City area through a family office approach.
“The family office mentality that Brave has, and their historical expertise — we’re excited to bring it to the team,” Pfister said. The acquisition brings specialized knowledge in hedge exposure and financial derivatives used to protect client assets in volatile markets.
The New York expansion follows AlphaCore’s June acquisition of Colorado’s Elk River Wealth Management, which added $1 billion in assets, and the October 2025 acquisition of SPC Financial, a wealth and tax advisory firm based in Rockville, Maryland.
“We say it’s a meritocracy here. If you have a better way of doing something, we’ll integrate that and then the whole country gets the benefit from it,” Pfister said. “We have AI tools that we wouldn’t have used a year ago, but somebody in our Denver office was using them. So, you really get these benefits of scale.”
AlphaCore now has over 120 employees nationwide. The firm’s previous acquisitions include Callan Capital, Entrust Wealth Advisors, and All Season Financial Advisors. Pfister said the firm is now targeting the Bay Area for its next regional expansion.
“We’re not building for growth; we’re building a good firm. When you build a good firm, you need to do what’s right for the client first,” Pfister said. “So growth is the result, it’s not the goal.”
AlphaCore’s executive leadership team remains based in La Jolla, and the firm supports local causes including Voices for Children, Curebound, and hiring from local universities.
Sources: San Diego Business Journal, SDBJ
