While it might be normal for firms with less than $ 500 million in assets under management to rely on a few rainmakers, that rarely works once the business exceeds $ 1 billion in AUM.
But while it might be normal for firms with less than $ 500 million in assets under management to rely on a few professionals, that rarely works once the business exceeds $ 1 billion in AUM.
M & A activity has distracted many senior managements over the last decade. After all, for every transaction, merger experts estimate there are six or seven other deal talks that fall through.
As industries grow, the companies in them see the need to create more professional operating structures. That’ s now happened in wealth management, and it’ s only in the last decade that many advisories have created the position of chief marketing officer and business development specialist— or have embraced new techniques like digital marketing and attempted to forge their own rigorous client acquisition systems. The sailing isn’ t all smooth, but many firms are starting to see results from adding these units.
Few firms are exerting a more concerted push on organic growth than Mercer Advisors, a national firm based in Denver managing over $ 70 billion. The firm separates sales( once a dirty word for those RIAs who fled big wirehouses and insurance companies) from advice.
year“ in the hole from Day One,” Maute observes.
The age profile of a firm’ s client base exerts a profound influence over its revenue outlook. Data published by Fidelity in 2023 suggest that when a firm’ s revenues are weighted by client age, those with clients averaging under 63 years old generated 6.4 % organic growth while those averaging 69 and older generated an anemic 0.3 %.
Yet even here there’ s a paradox: Those older clients are often more profitable, since they have bigger portfolios and their assets are typically parked in higher-margin vehicles like separate accounts. Yet those same clients are often unwinding their assets and their families frequently terminate the advisory relationship when they die.
While surveys indicate younger people want financial advice, they can find it freely available on the internet. The consulting firm Next Chapter found that 42 % of those under 40 use fintech platforms, 26 % use banks and 20 % have discount brokerage accounts. It estimates that only 11 % of wealth management clients are under 40. Probably the most concerning finding in a Next Chapter report is that clients over the age of 80“ contribute more revenue than all clients younger than 60 combined.”
What Do You Do Well?
Alisa Maute, an executive managing director and head of client development at Mercer, heads a team of 100 client acquisition specialists whose sole function is to bring in new business. Her team hand-selects advisors and matches them with clients, going out of its way to find the right fit. So an advisor might work with just widowers or filmmakers or some other unique niche.
That means determining your firms’ key strengths.“ What do you do really well and how do you capitalize on it?” she says.“ What works in Atlanta may not work in rural Iowa. There is no magic bullet.”
Part of the challenge facing advisory firms is that they are caught in a generational inflection point. Clients over the age of 60 still generate the lion’ s share of revenue, but most are living off their assets or preparing to.
Clients over the 73 must take required minimum distributions every year whether they like or not. With these clients, advisory firms start out every new
Meeting Young Clients Where They Hang
It’ s not surprising that the firms enjoying the best organic growth are pursuing younger new clients. A number of RIAs are seeing robust growth in the number of highearning millennials, a cohort that have demonstrated they are willing to pay for advice— but who like to pay through subscription models. Converting these clients to a more expensive AUM model is a work in progress, and some RIAs have encountered initial resistance.
The ones succeeding are looking in places where folks under
“ We’ ve got younger advisors who want to grow and are more entrepreneurial and want [ some ] autonomy.”— Angela Giombetti, Wealthspire
50 spend their time. Take Morton Wealth, a $ 3 billion AUM firm in Calabasas, Calif., which made a major effort this year to boost its advisor brand and showcase its expertise on LinkedIn.
Stacey McKinnon, the firm’ s chief operating officer and chief marketing officer, reports that it has garnered $ 150 million in new assets in the first eight months of 2025, al-
40 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2025 WWW. FA-MAG. COM