CRC-Oyster: New Beginnings

In the inaugural episode of Built To Scale with CRC-Oyster, host Michael Durette, Managing Principal and Chief Revenue Officer of CRC-Oyster, sits down with Founder and Managing Partner Mitch Avnet and Managing Principal Buddy Doyle. Together, they reflect on the origins of their respective legacy organizations and the strategic acquisition that brought them together under CRC-Oyster. The discussion explores the current regulatory landscape, the priorities and pressures facing clients today, and the opportunities ahead as CRC-Oyster continues to grow and evolve in 2026 and beyond.

CRC-Oyster: Compliance Risk Concepts / Oyster Consulting

Transcript

Welcome And Rebrand Reveal

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the Built to Scale podcast with CRC Oyster. This is the new rebranded Oyster Stew podcast following the acquisition of Oyster Consulting by Compliance Risk Concepts. Good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Michael Durett, and I am a managing principal and chief revenue officer at CRC Oyster. And I'm lucky enough to be joined today by Mitch Avnet, who is the founder and managing partner of CRC Oyster, and Buddy Doyle, who is another managing principal at CRC Oyster. What I thought today would be a very interesting conversation given the combination of legacy compliance risk concepts and oyster consulting. So, Mitch and Buddy, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much, Michael. Absolutely. So, Mitch, want to just kind of kick it off on the discussion. And I thought it would be really important to talk about, you know, where CRC Oyster is today, just how we got here. And really just wanted to have you and Buddy talk a little bit about the legacy organizations and then combining and what it is to look for into 2026 and beyond. So with that, Mitch, you know, just really want to hear from you, you know, who was and who is CRC Oyster?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

So all great questions. And we probably are going to take these in sort of a modular way as we make our way through the session, because I think as we talk through how we got here on our own and here we are today together, I think it there are some very compelling scenarios and stories to tell here. I started Legacy CRC in January of 2013 with my partner Joe Kelly. And buddy, jump right in here. But what was your launch date? It was about five years prior, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

October 1st, 2008. So think auction rates, and that'll probably bring you to the right period of time.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Breaking the buck. So you have two businesses who grew on their own organically since inception. And, you know, from a legacy CRC perspective, when we launched, we really came at the market from more of an institutional capital markets perspective, given what I had done for most of my career prior to launching the company. And Buddy and I actually knew each other and peripherally worked together on a number of initiatives while we were both at our legacy company, First Union and then Wachovia. But what was really compelling from my perspective is both companies are really addressing the same segments of the market, but two different sorts of clients, where we, as I said, really were really focused on the institutional side of the business. And Buddy, your background and and oyster's background is very strong on the wealth management side of the equation.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Yeah, it was really, really nice to look around and see Mitch and and the business he had built at CRC and the focus that that again, same marketplace in the broker dealers, investment advisors, but a different segment within that that industry that we were focused on that really made for a nice coming together of two organizations.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

So everybody here has been in the seat doing the job, either within a broker dealer, an asset management firm, or even at a regulatory body. So that's super compelling, I think, not only from a go-to-market standpoint, but in terms of what that means to our clients, because we are a plug-and-play solution at the end of the day, because all of us have been there and done that. And I think that's a much easier place to come from with a client in terms of gaining their trust, their respect, and the belief in what you're doing, versus coming at it from being a career consultant, never having sat a day in the seat of the people that you're supporting. But you know, Buddy, I'm sure you have a view on that.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Yeah, our entire organization was built about uh hiring experienced industry practitioners that can not just tell you what you need to be concerned about or where to focus your attention, but can provide you with that practical knowledge and expertise on how to implement the thing that the regulators are focused on or the industry's focused on in a in a truly practical way, balancing financial concerns, operational concerns, and and the governance, risk, and compliance concerns that we all face as an industry and putting it together to really move our clients forward in the best path and allow them to have the information to make the best decisions they can make.

Why Merge Now And What It Enables

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, and I think it's really interesting, right? So, buddy, the the auction rates in October of 2008 and Mitch in 2013, right? So both individuals grew their respective companies. When you look at the acquisition earlier this year, why now? What does it say about where the combined organization is going, right? And we talk a lot about the shared philosophy, but you know, Mitch would love your thoughts here as to building the business from 2013, buddy building the business from 2008. In 2025, the combined organization, what does it say about the business today and then also moving forward?

SPEAKER_02 6:03

So I I think, Michael, we should address it from a marketplace standpoint first rather than from a company standpoint. If you look at the market for compliance professional services, it's a dislocated market. And we know who the players are, large and small. But when we brought these two 50-person companies together and created a 100-person plus company, it really establishes us as a platform play now in a way both organizations were not previously. Oyster ran a great business, we ran a great business, but it takes us now to the next level. And one of the things that I've said frequently in terms of my desire to do this transaction and join together with Oyster is it really solidifies our position as the middle market in the compliance services space. And I think that gives us and our clients more options than they would normally have. And we can scale up to go toe-to-toe with the largest consultancies. And we're so flexible and nimble that we can go down market too and really serve the clients that ultimately got us to where we're going, the uh on the CRC side, the emerging to the middle markets players. So I think it's a very compelling sort of story, and it has resonated very well in the market.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

And along those lines, buddy, kind of looking at the partnership and looking at the merger of the two firms, when you were looking at partners that were out there, what brought you or what when you looked at Legacy CRC, what was it that kind of just made sense to you?

Culture Fit And Integration Priorities

SPEAKER_03 7:38

We actually hired the investment bank back in March of 24 to start exploring the marketplace as we looked at how we would grow going forward and started looking for that partner to build the scale that we had an infrastructure to support and uh trying to find that right partner with the same mindset about client service, the same mindset about the hiring experienced people and delivering those products and services to an industry that we had been in ourselves and felt really good about the approach that we had put together. And so as we were going through and evaluating potential partners, that was top of mind for the founders of Oyster, for the shareholders as well. And we are an employee-owned company. So to go from employee ownership to institutional ownership, you obviously wanted to make sure your people were aligned and that the cultures were aligned to move forward. And so that was a big component of what we were looking for. As Mitch mentioned earlier, we had worked together in the past. So there was already a foundation there to build on of personal relationships that we felt like we could take this corporate relationship and really move it forward together in a way that you just can't do apart.

Practitioner-Led Consulting Philosophy

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Absolutely. And as we've gotten through and into the integration of the two firms, I think it's really important that people realize that it's the people within the organization that make the combined entity so special. And it's the long-term tenure and experience of both legacy CRC and Legacy Oyster consultants who have sat in the seat, who have done those jobs and have had long-story careers where they're able to provide that advice that they had in-house to our clients on an outsourced basis. So if we take a look and kind of pivot a little bit and we look at our clients today, right? Buddy, if we look at the different break in the different makeup of the legacy organizations, under one umbrella, it's a unified platform. And if we look at kind of the distinct verticals that legacy oyster serviced, you know, certain areas of advisory and consulting services, you know, would love, would love some color on that as you've built that business and that practice kind of to the marketplace, what the combined organization can do on the advisory and consulting services side.

Advisory Depth And Trading Expertise

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Yeah, I think we had this belief out there, a core fundamental belief that uh governance, risk, and compliance programs don't usually fail in the plan and the testing and the policies and procedures. They fail in execution. And the rules and regulations are built not for the manual, but for how you open an account, how you place your orders into the market, how you execute and report those trades. And so we had built out through our strategic planning and execution team a group that helps our clients implement the recommendations that our GRC consultants were making in a really practical sense. And I think that bringing that skill and expertise to CRC and bringing some of the CRC skills and expertise around trading and markets to Oyster, it's really allowed us to better serve those constituents where air wealth management clients are putting orders into the marketplace and those are getting routed and executed to have the tacticians that CRC has, as well as people that Oyster had running trading desk and things like that, it really makes a difference to the client. There is an advantage to doing it with a vision to cross the entire organization. And so I think bringing that to the table was something that I think Mitch really liked about what we were doing. And the SaaS software offering of Oyster Solutions, which is also really designed to help you operationalize your governance, risk, and compliance program and make it efficient.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

And Mitch, if we think about the combined organizations, one of the things that our firm does, which most in the industry do not do, is working on an outsourcing principle basis and then providing that capacity support. So when you think about the compliance program services, the registration support, and then the supervisory principle CCO support that we have for our firms, how do you look at that and what differentiates CRC Oyster than the rest of the marketplace?

Outsourced Supervision And Differentiators

SPEAKER_02 12:23

I think anytime you hold yourself out there and are willing to take supervisory principle related risk, it really comes down to your belief in the quality of not only your people and their ability to affect those roles, but it's also in terms of the types of clients we work with and we want to work with. A lot of our decisions around providing supervisory principles are easy at the end of the day because most of our clients who utilize us in that capacity are utilizing us for the end-to-end support that we provide. And in most situations, it starts with initial registration of that client. So they want to become a broker dealer, they want to become an ATS, they want to become an investment advisor. Those are easier decisions to make for us because we're building the program for them. Now, does that mean we won't take on this risk if a client is already existing in the market and they have a need? Um, I'm gonna say we definitely want to have that conversation, but we have to also be very comfortable with the client's business model, their culture, and their risk profile because we want to make sure it's a good fit and makes the most sense from a risk management standpoint across the board. The other thing I'll add is it's one thing for companies to say that they'll provide people to fulfill these roles. It's another thing to have the skill set and the expertise to really understand what these roles entail. So we don't only take on outsourced chief compliance officer roles, we take outsource or fractional financial operations principle. We clear equity research, we do investment banking supervision and oversight. So we can fulfill all the roles where they're high value, but many organizations don't need those individuals on a full-time basis. And so when we align with clients who recognize the value and how hard it would be to find that skill set in the marketplace for the price point, we can provide it. And with the backing of 100 people to support those individuals, it's very hard to argue with our rationale here.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

And I think especially as the financial services industry moves more towards outsourcing functions, right? If it's the outsourced chief compliance officer or the outsource chief investment officer or chief technology officer, we've seen a massive influx over the last several years on both legacy organizations. And being able to staff that accordingly with people that have been there and done that in those in-the-seat roles really kind of lends huge value to our clients and then to the marketplace in general.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

You you just made a really good point. And it's something that I really want to sort of put a finer point on. You mentioned outsourced chief investment officer, outsourced chief technology officer. We can do all of these things, no matter what role you're satisfying, my belief system, and I know Buddy believes this too. All roads point to compliance, right? And so core to who we are in both legacy organizations is compliance. But what we've done in terms of that core strength is built a full service consultancy where we can serve in all of these front office roles in a commercially viable manner and at the end of the day, work to ensure that the client is protected from a regulatory and compliance standpoint.

Scale, Client Base, And Market Coverage

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Absolutely right, buddy. And if you think about either Oyster Solutions or SPE, those are industry practitioners that have different experience than our outsourced chief compliance officers. And so that offering, that full service, full suite offering that we can provide to financial service firms really does separate CRC Oyster from the marketplace.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

It really does. And our experience working with large and complex organizations trying to implement rules and regulations to smaller clients who outsource that implementation to us. It allows us a perspective on the marketplace that you just can't get. Even if you are in a large organization, you work inside that organization to make that organization better. But by working with teams like we have, we're able to look at the marketplace and say the rule's the rule. The products are the products. But it's how you implement that rule with your structure, with your tolerance for risk, with your client base, and the products that you sell to your clients are used to implement their goals and objectives and help them get where they want to be. That perspective comes from working with hundreds of clients throughout the marketplace to really get an understanding of how that market interacts with your organization, how regulators will interact with your organization, and how to best prepare yourself to get through this profitably and in a risk-managed, well-managed business.

2026 Outlook And Regulatory Pendulum

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Absolutely. And if you think about the combined organization servicing and providing support to over a thousand clients, and when we look at our client base of having less than 10 overlaps between the legacy organizations, it goes to show that these are standalone organizations combined into one, which provides that unmatched support and being able to understand what our clients are needing, looking for, and how to be able to support them in a manner which allows them to run profitable, successful businesses within the rules and regulations that financial services industry participants have to stay within. So, buddy, if we kind of pivot a little bit and we look at uh 2026, right? Because we're we're kind of walking down the road to very quickly into 26, what matters most, not only for our clients, but I think for the overall marketplace itself, what are the things that you're focused on and looking at as high priority items that firms should be looking at and how we can help them?

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Well, I think there's a couple of things going on out there. One is the regulatory environment is shifting. It always is. It's never stagnant. And sometimes it's loosening, sometimes it's tightening. And it's making sure that our clients are ready for that pendulum to swing both ways as they're looking forward. And that they're going into the opportunities that are presenting themselves in the marketplace with their eyes open into what that looks like as they truly get into the implementation side of things, and that they have their best information that we can provide them on where we see the market going, where we see technology going that supports that, and trying to line this up again to help our clients grow and be successful. And that's really what it's about is helping our clients grow and be successful by doing the things that they do to serve their clients and the way they do it in the best way they can.

AI, Digital Assets, And Practical Governance

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Absolutely. And Mitch, from your point of view, the conversations that you're having with industry executives, founders, leaders, what are you talking to them about? What are you looking at for this year and just in general?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Given what we do for a living, there's always going to be a shiny new object out on the horizon. And whether it's AI, whether it's digital assets, or whatever the new flavor of the day may be, I think what's really important is for our clients to benefit from our expertise in dealing with whatever comes down the pike. Having been doing this now for 30 plus years, and that's what's really compelling too on another front. We have a lot of adults in the room in CRC OISER. Most, if not all of us, have lived through several cycles within the economy. And, you know, when I look back to the internet bubble, right, and when the internet was going to be the end all be all of everything at that moment in time, one of the things that I always try to think about is to Buddy's earlier point with that pendulum, this too shall pass, right? But it'll become part of the economy, it'll become part of the business process. And what regulators need to do, like with any new shiny new object, is they have to figure out how to regulate it, right? And so regulators and compliance officers, by nature, have to be close followers. And so we pride ourselves on being close followers. And as things continue to emerge in the marketplace from an AI perspective or a digital asset perspective, the types of conversations I'm having with our clients and prospects is what are they doing? They can't stick their head in the ground and say, well, we don't use it. You're using it whether you know it or not on the AI front. Digital assets, as these become more and more normalized and make their way through the financial system, that's a good thing because it'll eradicate the levels of fraud that we see in new and interesting markets. And what's going to happen? The fraudsters will go to the next shiny thing, next shiny object first, and then everybody else will catch up. That's the world we live in. So when I look at 2026, it's really providing good guidance, advice, and support to those who are dipping their toe, want to dip their toe, don't know how to dip their toe, and really benefiting from what I think is a great repository of information across our thousand plus client base where we can anonymize sort of where people are in the industry. And depending on where you're living in the risk spectrum, you tell us where you want to be, and we'll help you build the mitigants and the controls around that.

Proactive vs Reactive Compliance

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Yeah, I think when you look at the marketplace and Mitch got into AI a little bit, and we've got a lot of clients that have invested in AI. They've started experimenting with these tools, maybe utilizing these tools for their operational needs, and they haven't quite figured out machine learning operations yet and how that's different than the way things used to be. And so one of the things that I'm excited about is that we have seen these implementations of digital assets, of different kinds of marketplace, predictive markets, alternative investments kind of shifting around. And as you do that, you need experts in this to really help you do that correctly. You think about it, Tiger Woods had a swing coach when he was winning every tournament. If you're doing well in this business, it's a good time to get that advice from a party that is objective on how you're implementing it to really help you understand where you're great at it, where you could use some help on it. There's nothing like an awareness there to really make a project successful. And we're seeing a lot of clients implement AI without that return that they've been looking for. And the more they do that, the more they need people like us to help them get that done.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

One of the things that I've seen, and and you're you're 100% spot on, buddy, but a lot of these folks who are starting to implement and and try new and different things, in a lot of instances that I've seen, don't even have a policy statement on what they want to do with AI in their organization. And I think even if you utilize or leverage CRC Oyster or another professional services organization, just to figure out where you want to live and breathe in this space, at least at the onset, will then drive everything else rather than having to reverse engineer a policy based on all the stuff that you've allowed into your environment with no controls around it.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Yeah, it's a lot like social media was where no, we don't do social media except the people that work there are all on social media. And I think that's where if you don't do AI, the people that work for your firm are using AI.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

And I think that's why proactive preparation constantly beats reactive remediation, right? And it's staying ahead and understanding where the industry is going and then leveraging the partnerships that our clients use with CRC Oyster to be able to think about that in the most compliant manner, understanding that the business moves forward. Regulation sometimes lags, sometimes leads, but really staying within that framework allows for a successful organization.

Integration Progress And Growth Strategy

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Having been the independent consultant under so many regulatory orders and settlements and things like that, it is much better to do this in advance than after the enforcement action or after the error. Not that we're not very good at remediations, but we prefer to keep people, you know, on the straight and narrow or you know, if you're in the gray, we'll come get you and pull you into the light.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

It's what we always talk about as the pay me now or pay me later scenario. Paying me now is a lot less onerous on you, especially um if you're regulatorily mandated to to bring in an independent consultant. It changes the whole tenor of the undertaking. It does.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

So, Mitch and Buddy, thank you so much for spending some time talking a little bit about the history of the legacy organizations, the combination of the two firms, and moving forward, the kind of shared vision of CRC Oyster. One final question as we wrap up, which would be as we look to the next few years, what's in store for CRC Oyster and what's in store for us in the services and execution that we provide to our clients? Mitch, I'll let you kick that one off.

Closing Thanks And Subscribe Links

SPEAKER_02 26:44

That's a big question. So, what's in store for CRC Oyster? I I think one of the things that I'm so excited about is as we make our way through this integration is to get to the ultimate or whatever perceived finish line we have in terms of completing the integration. And most of that is just integration of back office systems, which all those plans are are pretty much in place and ready to execute. That's nice to be able to put behind ourselves because what we have been focused on, in addition to, and in a lot of ways more importantly, is really integrating our teams and figuring out how to leverage the synergies within both legacy organizations. So I think as we look forward to the year to come and thereafter, I think we're we've only scratched the surface together. And we hit the ground running together the day we inked the deal. And what I would would like to point to is Buddy and I worked together for 10 months, among other many important people, to get this deal to close. And the grounding principle in this for me was and is we really wanted to work together. And as tough as any integration can be, and they're all tough. I don't care what anybody says to you, as tough as any integration can be, what I come back to at the end of every day is we want to be doing this together. We are doing this together, and we're going to succeed together because we're seeing it already. But like I said, we have so many great things ahead in terms of this business combination. And I think the more time we have together in the market, it'll become clearly evident to any and all who are watching. So I'm very excited about that. We're going to continue to grow organically. We're going to continue to look for opportunistic, tuck under sort of acquisitions, what we like to call aqua hires. And, you know, in the fight for talent, we're looking for talented people. We'll continue to look for talented people. But at the end of the day, we have a really strong fundamental core business here. And anything we build together going forward is really building upon that strong foundation that we've both had in our legacy organizations and even more so now together. And Buddy, final app, bat, final thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Anything to add to that?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Yeah, I think CRC was a firm that helped clients achieve best practices. Oyster was a firm that helped clients achieve best practices. Together, we've got the best of the best practices, and we're going to unleash that into the marketplace with a talented team of individuals. And I think we've already made a statement in the marketplace in terms of quality, in terms of consistency and value that we can provide to our customers. It has changed as we came together. And it was good before, but it is a higher level now. And so I think as we go forward together, I expect to see great things happening at C or C Oyster. I expect all the news to be good for our clients. And it's a really exciting time for us. We're recording this six months after the transaction closed. And I think if we were recording this six months from now, we'll be equally as excited about one, what we've accomplished, but two, about the future that we have together.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Excellent. Well, Mitch, Buddy, thank you so much for joining today.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Thank you for listening to today's podcast. For more information, you can find us at compliance-risk.com or oysterlc.com. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Take care, and we will see you soon.