Crescent Grove Advisors names Andrew Krei CIO for subsequent decade of development
Andrew Krei, chief asset placement officer at Crescent Grove Advisors.
The boutique RIA with $5 billion in AUM faucets insider CIO as middle-market corporations race to construct next-generation management
Crescent Grove Advisors, a Lake Forest, Illinois-based wealth supervisor for ultra-high-net-worth households and establishments, has promoted Andrew Krei to chief asset placement officer.
The transfer elevates Krei, who had already been sharing the position in a co-CIO capability, whereas conserving the highest asset placement seat inside a agency that has staked its identification on rising from inside.
Dave Keevins, who co-founded the agency roughly a decade in the past, will step again from day-to-day asset placement management to chair Crescent Grove’s asset placement committee, whereas persevering with in his roles as managing director and senior consumer advisor.
“Our development has all the time been rooted in constructing from inside, investing in our folks, increasing our capabilities and creating alternatives for gifted professionals to develop with the group,” Gregg George, co-founder, managing director and senior consumer advisor on the agency, mentioned in an announcement.
“Dave, Andrew and the whole Crescent Grove Investment Committee have constructed a particular asset placement platform that has advanced alongside our agency’s growth and the more and more complicated wants of our shoppers,” George mentioned.
Krei, who joined Crescent Grove after main asset placement analysis at Cedar Street Advisors, will now direct the agency’s method to portfolio building, asset allocation and asset placement analysis. He earned his bachelor’s diploma from the University of California at Los Angeles and belongs to the CFA Society in Milwaukee.
“I’m grateful for the arrogance that the agency has positioned in me and excited to proceed working alongside such a gifted group of colleagues,” Krei mentioned, pointing to the agency’s founding purpose of “[providing] shoppers with a best-in-class, open-architecture asset placement platform.
“Maintaining that prime normal is essential to our capability to go above and past for shoppers in delivering distinctive outcomes as their wealth and {the marketplace} turn into extra complicated,” he mentioned.
Keevins, who mentored Krei at Cedar Street Advisors earlier than co-founding Crescent Grove, mentioned their working relationship has been ongoing for 20 years.
“[N]ow is the proper time for him to take over managing the day-to-day operations of the Investment Committee whereas I give attention to its oversight and strategic route,” he mentioned, including that the agency is “well-positioned in our second decade to strengthen our asset placement in each our folks and our shoppers.”
The agency, based in 2015, is employee-owned and now manages greater than $5 billion in property throughout places of work in Lake Forest, Milwaukee and Atlanta.
Crescent Grove’s management replace lands as mid-size impartial RIAs of its measurement face rising stress to formalize government constructions as soon as reserved for a lot bigger enterprises.
Chief asset placement officer, chief compliance officer and chief working officer roles now seem at roughly 40% or extra of corporations as soon as property climb into the billion-dollar-plus vary, in line with information from Schwab’s 2025 RIA Benchmarking Study. That identical survey, coated in Schwab’s RIA compensation report, discovered government administration positions make up near 1 in 6 employees members industrywide, and fairness possession is concentrated most closely amongst managing companions and chief executives.
According to the Ensemble Practice’s newest analysis on government compensation, median compensation for CIOs throughout wealth corporations was simply over $346,000 in 2025, together with roughly $280,600 in base pay. Their pay packages additionally tended to incorporate possession within the agency and, amongst these receiving fairness compensation, deferred earnings and inventory compensation.
Crescent Grove’s push towards continued development and layered management additionally tracks with the place the RIA trade seems to be headed strategically. Advisor Growth Strategies’ 2026 RIA Deal Room Report discovered the $500 million-to-$5 billion phase of the market – the so-called center market – is more and more caught between scaling up or turning into an acquisition goal, with patrons putting a rising premium on corporations which have constructed out a “robust and engaged next-gen group.”
“It is protected to imagine that the center of the market ($500M-$5B AUM) is the favored hunting ground for larger platforms,” the report mentioned. “The arms race for measurement and attain that started a number of years in the past put stress on the center market to evolve quicker, or threat struggling to compete.”
