This local wealth management firm is growing in more ways than one

Highland Wealth has had a big year.

In 2024, the Baton Rouge-based wealth management firm has seen its assets under management balloon, its team grow and its geographic reach expand—and more moves are on the horizon.

Partner Gavin Filasek tells Daily Report that much of the firm’s recent success can be attributed to the strength of its referral network.

“We work only by referrals. … When we provide really good service, our clients tend to tell their families and their friends about us,” he says. “That’s how we built our business and it just keeps on working.”

Over the course of the past year, Highland Wealth’s assets under management rose from about $385 million to some $505 million—a roughly 27% uptick.

To support that growth, the firm has added four advisers to its Baton Rouge office and brought on a new head of sales to oversee adviser training, development and accountability.

The firm has also expanded its geographic footprint this year, adding advisers in the Lafayette and Thibodaux markets. Another adviser will be added in Mandeville in early 2025. Filasek says the plan is to keep expanding eastward and westward from those markets as time goes on.

“Our goal is to become a southeastern regional firm,” he says.

To that end, Highland Wealth expects to expand into Jackson, Mississippi, in the next 12 to 18 months, and it’s eyeing further expansion opportunities in Alabama, Georgia and Texas that could materialize in the next 12 to 24 months.

Filasek says the firm is also in talks to acquire two books of business in Q1 2025—one in Lafayette and one in Mandeville—that would add a combined $160 million to its assets under management.

Highland Wealth was founded in 2007. Its headquarters is near the intersection of Bluebonnet Boulevard and Highland Road.