The Advisor's Note: archive
Every The Advisor's Note story in Advisors, newest first. 54 stories
1 story
Merrill raises 2027 growth-award bar to $7.5M and 4 net households
The core grid stays flat, and the $150 million Elite Award becomes three categories paying a 50% premium.
1 story
Beacon Pointe to buy $1B WorthPointe without founder Van Slyke
Terms were not disclosed, and the Austin and Tyler offices become new Beacon Pointe locations.
1 story
BofA survey: 37% of incoming U.S. family office principals said they were very prepared
A quarter of 355 U.S. family offices surveyed had a leadership transition in the last decade.
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Morningstar: Excluding long-term-care costs cuts U.S. retirement shortfall risk about 25%
Separate F&G and WTW surveys find 51% of pre-retirees plan semi-retirement and 36% of U.S. employees feel financially secure.
1 story
Mercer Advisors: roughly half of H1 2026 net new assets came from custodian referrals
S&P says the fees paid to custodian partners could limit Mercer's margin expansion, the cost side of a channel the firm says supplies half its growth.
1 story
Schwab raises tax-aware long-short account minimum to $10 million
The accounts represented $60.7 billion of Schwab's $187.9 billion in client margin loans at the end of September.
1 story
Morgan Stanley reports $15.2 billion in alternative net flows
Fitch shows nontraded BDC redemption requests at 9.8% while the funds still cap quarterly repurchases at 5% of shares.
1 story
Connecticut Wealth Management hires Subatomic for five-year AI build
The $5.2 billion RIA expects a first phase before the end of 2026 and says the system is intended to help maintain its 35-to-1 client-to-advisor ratio.
1 story
Carlyle takes minority stake in $52B Prime Capital Financial
Prime Capital Financial says 170 advisors hold equity and manage 95% of assets; Abry Partners exited in the recapitalization.
1 story
Wells Fargo Advisors FiNet recruits 11-advisor Ameriprise team to form Orchard Financial Group
Michael Kawase, Eric Smutko, Audre Schmedes and Anthony Perez move from Ameriprise to Wells Fargo FiNet.
1 story
Orion quotes vendors up to $20,000 a month for platform data
Vendors told WealthTech Today the quoted fee reaches that level; Fidelity and BNY Pershing are also changing platform access terms.
1 story
Goldman Sachs COO John Waldron could become CEO in January, RIABiz reports
RIABiz says Waldron oversaw the Folio Institutional acquisition and the Creative Planning custody deal.
2 stories
Merrill, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Wells Fargo lose net 517 experienced advisors in H1 2026
The first-half decline already exceeds 2025's net loss of 302 experienced advisors, according to Diamond Consultants.
F2 Strategy: 87% of surveyed wealth firms use or pilot AI; 6% run agentic tools
F2 Strategy's Q2 2026 survey of 40 firms overseeing $8.6 trillion finds AI technology spending has a very weak correlation with measurable business value.
1 story
Merrill's Form ADV prices manager access at up to $860,000 plus 0.1% of revenue
The Bank of America wirehouse says it will have a financial incentive to recommend managers that pay for data analytics, effective Jan. 1, 2027.
1 story
Ensemble survey: RIAs above $1B lost 4.3% of clients in 2023, below $500M 1.4%
Philip Palaveev ties the 2.9-point gap to client-service employees who hold no equity stake.
1 story
SEC proposes repealing two-year pay-to-play ban on government advisory work
The proposal would delete Rule 206(4)-5, the federal timeout that led many advisers to ban all employee political contributions.
1 story
Concurrent-Spire deal keeps 30 advisor brands, adds equity after a year
The $5.4 billion acquisition leaves Spire's teams independent under their own names; same-day moves from UBS and Cambridge landed at independent platforms.
2 stories
Goldman survey finds fewer Americans increasing retirement savings as Gen X lags
The share reducing savings rose to 14% from 8%, and Gen X posted the lowest on-track reading at 49%.
Goldman survey: Share increasing retirement savings falls to 39% from 55%
The share reducing savings rose to 14% from 8%, and Gen X posted the lowest on-track reading of the four generations, at 49%.
1 story
Tax Foundation models 86 tax-code changes, led by AMT simplification
The alternative minimum tax dates to 1969; the Congressional Budget Office projects fewer than 600,000 taxpayers will pay it in 2026.
1 story
Modern Wealth logs six advisor moves and a four-advisor liftout in one day
The Sept. 28 records show the week's largest single advisor count; UBS and Raymond James each lost three-advisor teams earlier in the week.
1 story
Schwab's cash shelf turns the sweep into a product
Save's Market Savings puts principal-protected yield in front of more than 16,000 RIAs on Schwab's platform, and gives the next custody renewal a number it never had to defend.
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Ameriprise’s retention check is now a recruiting benchmark
One-time, taxed cash is now measured against equity that gets priced at the next transaction, and this quarter’s moves show advisors doing that math.
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Savvy has a 90-second demo and no published custody price
Its introducing-broker model leaves RIAs comparing a workflow number against unpublished clearing economics.
1 story
Schwab's Q4 connector turns AI access into a custody term
The assistant arrives with eleven integration partners and one custodian. Advisors should audit the custody agreement, not the license fee.
1 story
Prediction-market volume has outrun the products advisors can buy
The wrappers advisors can buy own crypto beta, not event contracts, while the real exposure moves off-platform.
1 story
The RIA bidding war has moved to the holding period
Eight ways to fund an RIA purchase, and the one term that decides whether the seller's team is still there when the buyer's clock runs out.
2 stories
Buried gold and the exit nobody priced
A Pasadena advisor's wildfire-night dig makes the case that the hard part of an exotic asset is unwinding it in the right sequence.
MoneyGuide makes the plan page an annuity shelf
The software now models guaranteed income inside the portfolio projection, turning the retirement income conversation from education into product selection.
1 story
The 401(k) now starts income before the rollover
BlackRock's default embeds guaranteed income and private assets, moving the fall's tax checkpoints after the income decision.
1 story
AI's five weeks come with an unquantified bill
The next split is between firms that can assure AI outputs and those that cannot.
1 story
Schwab prices AI at $240 a seat
The custodian's Claude integration turns AI into a custody line item, and the process work will cost more than the license.
1 story
Anthropic's advisor list will be won on fees, not logos
The AI firm is making wealth managers submit pricing and service proposals, giving independent practices a rare shot at pre-IPO wealth that private banks used to control.
2 stories
Kahan built a pro bono channel, not a gesture
Twenty-five years on, the replicable piece of the 9/11 volunteer effort is the plumbing that put willing planners in front of families who needed them.
Mariner's $175 million bot budget is a supervision purchase
At $250,000 a bot, the AI gap in wealth management is now a data-custody and review-standard problem.
1 story
A zero-fee custody pitch turns due diligence upside down
Interactive Brokers has put a zero on the fee page; advisors now have to underwrite response times and export clauses before moving a dollar.
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A tax-burden rebuttal for the 401(k) fairness critique
The ARA's tax-burden ratios give advisors a factual answer when the fairness critique starts costing plan contributions.
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Insurance-owned advisor books are the new breakaway pipeline
Same-day Northwestern Mutual exits show hybrid RIAs winning with equity and custody independence.
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Aquiline's Flourish Deal Puts Cash Sweeps in the Boardroom
Advisors with client cash on the platform must now justify the revenue splits that private equity ownership will sharpen.