This year’ s young advisors are finding ways to stand out in an increasingly consolidating business.
COVER STORY
In 2025
This year’ s young advisors are finding ways to stand out in an increasingly consolidating business.
By Eric Rasmussen and Financial Advisor Staff
WHEN FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE RAN ITS first“ Young Advisors to Watch” list 10 years ago, you could already see that attitudes about this industry were changing. There were probably some veterans kicking around who remembered cold-calling dozens( or hundreds) of prospects from a brokerage firm in a skyscraper in the 1980s.
But the younger people pushing up through the bottom of the industry by the 2010s had come to know their industry in a different way. There was a stark question: Did older and younger advisors have the same agenda? Did they have the same experience? What do they have to say to each other about the soul of the business?
For instance, what would an’ 80s cold caller think of Brooklyn Brock, who says she won’ t do trades at her new business and where it’ s designed so that everybody( she included) works part-time. What would they think of other advisors who create plans remotely from different cities at all hours? What would a person who devised plans from an Excel spreadsheet in 2005 think of someone using artificial intelligence today to figure out a client’ s needs?
Cultures change. It’ s inevitable. And it’ s not just because young advisors are spoiled or demanding different lifestyle choices. They
are likely seeing the value of what they do in completely different ways. After all, they have to.
There’ s a deluge of private equity money crashing into the RIA space, and it’ s sent the valuations of firms skyrocketing. The firstgeneration entrepreneurs who forged the advisory cottage industry into a consolidating mainstream institutional business are now wanting to monetize a lifetime of their work. They want those valuations to be high. But that’ s made it harder for younger people to buy in, even though they’ re helping build these businesses. All this could suggest brewing civil war, and indeed you hear stories from the trenches that illustrate that fact— people getting locked out of offices and such.
For those younger advisors who can’ t catch the car, they’ re going to be looking to start their own shops with fees for plans or billable hours. Or they might be settling into the idea that they’ re going to become W-2 employees at RIAs ballooning in size( and hope there are enough big firms like this that will absorb them).
A bigger question young advisors ask: What is the value of advice itself if you’ re not managing assets? Has that value been bundled up? Can it be unlocked in new ways? That speaks to the very essence of financial advice. It might take a new generation with new ideas to unlock it.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE FINANCIAL ADVISORS MAY 2025 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | 31