FA’ S 2025 RIA SURVEY & RANKING
“ The cool part of that is that the advisor can make more money,” he says. He adds that the dreaded fee compression facing the industry never happened. Even though advisors are expected to do more for their 1 %, AI can help with that.“ There’ s less preparation, there’ s less follow up.”
And that will be an advantage to younger advisors.“ You don’ t have to be a 25-year veteran,” Brodeski continues.“ Instead of taking 25 years to become a world-class advisor, you might be able to do that in five or seven.”
The bigger addressable market and the advantage of fiduciary advice has not been lost on broker-dealer rivals down the street. Giants like LPL, Raymond James, Cambridge and Commonwealth( now part of LPL and billing itself as an RIA) have already created RIA channels( or bought into them). And in June of this year, two other giant private equitybacked firms, Osaic and Cetera, made huge inroads into the RIA firm channel. Osaic bought CW Advisors, a $ 13.5 billion AUM firm in Boston, while Cetera launched a dedicated RIA channel.
Culture Clashes
As consolidation runs rampant in the RIA world, and as private equity deals have driven up firm valuations, there have been cultural wars brewing between the older advisors who might be looking to sell their firms for top dollar and the younger advisors who want to buy in and who might view their firms’ cultures in a different light.
Alan Moore, co-founder of the XY Planning Network, has been a critic of the way younger advisors have been expected to adjust in this new reality.“ They want to grow in a controlled way, [ and be allowed ] the time and space to get to know their clients,” he says.“ PE is the exact opposite— growth at all costs and anything without a clear ROI gets cut. Also, when PE makes an investment into a firm they put extremely onerous non-competes on the younger advisors, and I am finding more and more don’ t want to sign those documents, which would essentially sign away their ability to ever operate outside of the firm.”
The lofty valuations of firms have barely retreated, but the chief executives of the big acquirers say that the capital structures of the deals are changing as firms become choosier and focus on acquisition targets that are actually growing organically.
Cooper at Beacon Pointe says that he’ s heard
“ Traditionally, the mass affluent have been materially underserved because it wasn’ t efficient or profitable to serve that segment. Well, increasingly, AI— using process automation— it has the potential to be able to expand that marketplace.”
— BRENT BRODESKI, FOUNDER & CEO, SAVANT WEALTH MANAGEMENT
of deals souring at the last minute because the organic growth isn’ t there. A lot of cultural fit and proof of organic growth is going to come from firms with deep, multigenerational talent pools.
Avy Stein, the founder and co-chairman of Cresset Capital, also spoke about trends on a panel at Pershing Insite with DeVoe and mentioned that Cresset was growing at 14 %. He noted that differentiation in the client base is important.
“ There’ s something that people need to understand, which is if your average client is 40 years old, it’ s very different than if your average client is 70 years old. If your average client [ has ] $ 50 million of net worth, it’ s very different than if your average client [ has ] $ 2 million of net worth. Because in general, the larger the client size, the younger the clients, the more they keep adding to their portfolio, which gives you embedded growth. The older the client is and the smaller the amount of money they have to deal with, the more there’ s drawdown. So growth is something you really need to think about multidimensionally.”
John Furey, a managing partner at Advisor Growth Strategies, a Phoenix-based consulting firm for RIAs pursuing M & A deals, says some firms are looking at being acquired by entities that are more partner-centric and maybe not as large as the firms with hundreds of billions in AUM dominating the market.“ There are these new, emerging buyers that are a match. That’ s the beauty of the market now. When you think of seller choice, there’ s a lot more.” He says five years ago there were only a dozen or so buyers.“ Now there’ s like 60.”
JULY / AUGUST 2025 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | 33