Growing up in Humboldt County on the northern California coast in the 1970s and ‘80s, Daryl Seaton was surrounded by farm animals, cannabis crops and wineries to the south.
Seaton was a member of Future Farmers of America and 4-H, was surrounded by an agrarian lifestyle and fell in love with the intricacies of the varietal arts. So much so that when he went into financial services, he took a blended approach to winemaking as an inspiration for his approach to investing.
“There’s a science to making wine, but it’s also an art form, especially when you’re making a blended wine,” Seaton, the president of Sowell Management, explains. “Investing is similar. Seaton’s methodology is a multi-strategy, multi-methodology, fractionally blended approach, using individual securities, ETFs and mutual funds. We want the flexibility of whatever works for the client.”
After graduating from Whittier College in 1995, Seaton helped oversee the construction of a new facility for the Family Christian Center in Sacramento and got involved in fundraising for the project. One of the congregants was so impressed that he recommended Seaton for a job at New York Life.
Seaton began his career as a life insurance agent, became involved in investment management through New York Life’s RIA, Eagle Strategies, and earned his Series 65 license and other credentials. By 2012 he was a senior partner, in charge of the insurance giant’s northern California region.
But the company had prioritized variable products and Seaton wanted to devote more time to providing clients with investing and planning advice. In 2014, Seaton and his wife opened their own firm, Solera Asset Managers, a DBA hybrid affiliated with an independent broker-dealer that became an RIA in 2016.
While some insurance products “might or might not” be in the best interest of the client, Seaton says he was drawn to the transparency of the RIA fiduciary model. “You’re aligned with your client on a daily basis,” he says. “That made a lot of sense to me.”
Based in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville, California, Solera reflects Seaton’s passion for making top-quality wine and his risk management investing philosophy.
For vintners, solera is a process that uses “fractional blending” to age wine in such a way that the finished product is a mixture of ages, with the average age gradually increasing as the process continues over many years.
The RIA says it offers clients “fractionally blended” portfolios designed to manage risk. Diverse products and strategies are blended to create a mix intended to “grow wealth and protect against catastrophic investment losses.”
Solera partnered with Arkansas-based Sowell Management as a turnkey asset management provider and platform for outsourced services such as compliance and technology. The collaboration proved productive, and Sowell bought most of Solera’s assets in 2020.
Seaton still heads Solera but became COO of Sowell when the two firms joined forces. He became the firm’s president in 2021 when he moved his family to North Little Rock.
Solera will continue to work closely with Sowell, which Seaton expects to approach $12 billion in assets in a few years. The financial advisor industry grows, driven by innovations and new technology.
“We will most likely see more trends towards advice and customization of investment management,” Seaton says. “Facilitating investor choices fueled by a desire to invest in things the clients believe in will be key. The fiercely independent advisor will look for economies of scale and the benefits of aligning with larger entities. However, they will still want to build their business as they have envisioned.”