ORBA Wealth Advisors

ORBA Wealth Advisors

ORBA Wealth Advisors operates as the registered investment advisory arm of Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, a full-service CPA firm founded in 1977 and based in Chicago's Loop. The wealth management practice formalized as a standalone entity in 2018, reflecting a structural trend among mid-sized accounting firms to ring-fence investment advisory services. The firm draws its client base from the tax and business advisory relationships ORBA has cultivated over four decades, giving it an embedded referral pipeline into closely held business owners, professional services partners, and multi-generational families across the greater Chicago area. ORBA Wealth Advisors delivers financial planning and discretionary portfolio management to individuals, high-net-worth households, and institutional clients. The firm constructs portfolios spanning public equities, fixed income, and alternative investments, with an emphasis on tax-aware asset location and estate integration — a direct extension of its CPA-firm DNA. While specific named portfolio holdings are not publicly disclosed, the firm's ADV filings and public communications indicate broad exposure across US large-cap equities, municipal bonds, and private real estate via interval fund structures. The practice covers clients concentrated in Illinois, with additional relationships across the Midwest and Florida retirement corridors. Team size and total assets under management are not publicly disclosed. The firm operates from ORBA's primary office at 180 North LaSalle Street in Chicago, without additional branch locations. As a boutique RIA embedded in a mid-market accounting firm, ORBA Wealth Advisors sits at the intersection of tax planning and investment management — a configuration that allows it to coordinate estate plans, partnership tax basis, and portfolio construction under one advisory roof. September 2024: The firm maintained its fee-only, fiduciary RIA structure with custody primarily through major institutional custodians, consistent with its Form ADV filed with the SEC. What structurally distinguishes ORBA Wealth Advisors from a standalone RIA is its integration into an active CPA practice. The wealth management team can access tax-return-level financial data for shared clients, enabling real-time tax-loss harvesting, qualified small business stock planning, and retirement distribution sequencing that a disconnected advisor would need to reconstruct. This architectural advantage — common at the upper end of the multi-family office market but rare among $100M–$500M AUM RIAs — positions ORBA as a bridge between transactional accounting and comprehensive family-office-style wealth management for Midwest business owners.