BPS Wealth Advisors

Brian P. Simon serves as CEO and Chief Investment Officer and personally chairs the firm's investment committee. Simon's background in structured finance at PaineWebber and CIBC World Markets shaped the firm's credit-intensive approach to alternatives sourcing. All direct deal allocations require his approval, and he remains the named portfolio manager on the firm's regulatory filings.

BPS sources primarily through long-standing operator relationships rather than intermediary auctions or placement agents. On the real estate side, the firm partners with regional developers in the Southeast and Texas, typically providing equity or preferred equity into specific projects. On the private credit side, BPS originates bridge loans and structured-note participations through a network of law firms, specialty lenders, and restructuring advisors — channels that trace back to Simon's Wall Street relationships.

BPS is a registered investment advisor, not a single-family office, but it markets itself as a virtual family-office platform. The firm serves approximately 40 high-net-worth families and operates an in-house alternatives desk that many of its RIA peers would outsource to third-party platforms. This hybrid structure places it closer to a multi-family office in function, though it does not provide tax-preparation or concierge-family-office services.

BPS emphasizes direct co-investment structures over blind-pool fund commitments, particularly in real estate and private credit. However, for asset classes where direct access is challenging — including hedge funds and certain energy strategies — the firm does allocate to external managers and has historically invested in managed-futures and long/short equity funds. The firm's marketing material stresses the absence of fund-of-funds layering in its core alternatives program.

The firm acts as a co-investor alongside operators and sponsors rather than as a lead or fund manager itself. Simon has publicly described this as giving clients co-investor economics without the blind-pool risk typical of closed-end funds. BPS structures its co-investments entity-by-entity, allowing clients to opt in or out of individual deals rather than committing to a multi-year drawdown vehicle.

In early 2024, BPS launched a dedicated energy-transition sleeve targeting tax-equity investments in utility-scale solar projects. The initial allocation was made alongside a national solar developer, structured to capture the Inflation Reduction Act's transferability provisions for clean-energy tax credits. This marks a departure from the firm's earlier energy exposure, which focused more on royalty interests and exploration-stage credit.

BPS charges an advisory fee on managed assets and does not layer additional carry or placement fees on the direct deals it sources, according to the firm's public descriptions of its compensation model. This stands in contrast to many RIA platforms that earn revenue-sharing or placement fees from third-party alternative-asset managers. Clients pay transaction-level expenses associated with individual deals but avoid the fund-of-funds expense stack BPS explicitly markets against.