Advisors archive
Every Advisors story, newest first. 898 stories
3 stories
- Products & portfolios
Defiance's hourly reset turns leveraged single-stock ETFs into a compounding bet
Six-times-a-day rebalancing means a client's result will not equal twice the stock's daily move.
- Tax & estate planning
State tax treatment of Trump accounts keeps shifting
Slott's September update says states are reversing course, leaving state-by-state confirmation as the real advisory task.
- Practice management
A client's bad trade is still the client's call
Fiduciary duty requires following lawful client instructions; the advisor's craft is in the pause, the paper trail, and the reassessment that follows.
11 stories
- Practice management
Salesforce bets advisor AI on follow-through, not note-taking
The Agentic Advisor suite turns meeting output into prioritized action, but small-firm adoption remains the open question.
- Practice management
New scholarship targets career changers, the pipeline CFP funding skips
Twenty $5,000 grants aim at women switching into planning, a profession whose student-focused funding has missed them.
- Practice management
Senators to FINRA: make transfer locks a rule
A Senate push would put deliberate friction in front of every outbound ACATS transfer.
- Practice management
Wells Fargo's second outage is a client-communication test
Manual order entry covers execution; the durable fix belongs in advisors' client-communication plans.
- Practice management
A former Stanford receiver chooses NIL freshmen over NFL millions
Osiris St. Brown made his NFL brothers his first clients, then aimed his practice at college athletes who get paid before they understand money.
- Practice management
FINRA Pulls Bulk Enforcement Data, Keeping Vetting in Search Box
A downloadable FINRA enforcement file appeared in August, then vanished after reporter questions, leaving broker-dealer and recruit vetting dependent on the regulator's search box.
- The Advisor's Note
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.
- Practice management
Plan sponsors are ready for discretionary menus
Fidelity's annual study finds 41% of sponsors now want advisers to take full control of plan investment menus, up from 36% in 2025 — a figure retirement-plan practices can take into the next sponsor conversation.
- Practice management
RIAs doubled AI adoption. The payoff is still unproven.
A BCG finding that just 6% of companies have seen AI reduce costs or grow revenue puts practice owners on the hook to prove the tool adds clients.
- Practice management
SEC pay-to-play repeal won't rewrite the compliance manual
The proposed rollback of the 2010 political-contribution rule leaves the blanket bans firms adopted to avoid it standing until chief compliance officers choose to reopen them.
- Practice management
NASAA's IAR CE rule: obligation follows the rep
The six-plus-six credit split is simple; the state-registration trigger and permanent carryover demand a per-rep ledger.
5 stories
- Tax & estate planning
Social Security worries outrun client plans—an advisor opening
A Nationwide Retirement Institute survey finds broad agreement that Social Security must change but little household planning for a benefit cut, making scenario planning the current retirement-income work.
- Practice management
Vanguard's Altruist deal puts a toll on the ETF shelf
A Kitces.com analysis traces the deal to revenue sharing, the fee that turns fund menus and renewal terms into an advisor's first negotiating table.
- Practice management
Client advances need a script, not silence
Ask an Advisor's latest column shows advisors handling unwanted client advances alone; 71% of workplace-harassment survey respondents cite retaliation fears.
- The Advisor's Note
Insurance-owned advisor books are the new breakaway pipeline
Same-day Northwestern Mutual exits show hybrid RIAs winning with equity and custody independence.
- Practice management
Tax planning is the new client-acquisition play
The $15 million estate-plan trap and Longview's 1% annual drag turn review season into a growth event.
1 story
- Practice management
Wealth M&A buyers now underwrite tech stacks
Integration has moved into pre-deal diligence, but the larger return sits one layer up in orchestration.
3 stories
- Products & portfolios
Forced income can cost high-net-worth clients 1% a year
Longview Research Partners prices the drag from forced bond and REIT payouts, and the result belongs in every taxable-account review.
- Practice management
The 14.4% savings benchmark belongs in annual reviews
Fidelity's Q2 data makes the average participant's deferral the number to put in front of clients saving less.
- Products & portfolios
Cliffwater's 5% cap turns redemptions into a three-quarter distribution plan
Advisors whose clients need cash in the next couple of years should treat the $31 billion fund as a position already in wind-down.
12 stories
- Practice management
Envestnet's $35M Tamarac surge is a retention play
The doubled investment comes as portfolio rivals upgrade around the platform, making the rollout's reliability the metric that matters.
- Tax & estate planning
Health costs to climb 8.2% — a retirement planning base case
Marsh's fifth consecutive year of above-CPI employer cost growth gives advisors a concrete number for modeling medical spending in retirement.
- Practice management
Breakaway freedom has a service-desk ceiling
A recruiting consultant's case studies suggest advisors should audit back-office service as aggressively as they negotiate transition packages.
- Products & portfolios
Model portfolios now hold most RIA client assets
Advisor-built and home-office sleeves account for 71% of model assets, showing the shift is about workflow, not handing off the mandate.
- Tax & estate planning
Career gaps cost more than the time they take
Pew's public-sector modeling gives advisors a concrete number to put in front of clients before they cut hours or step away.
- Recruiting & transitions
Rockefeller's double raid puts a price on the cap table pitch
Two teams carrying $950 million left Stifel and Morgan Stanley for Rockefeller, the latest evidence that advisors now price platform ownership above retention dollars.
- Practice management
Record millionaire 401(k) count is a client-call list
Advisors who treat Fidelity's record as an agenda—Roth conversions, concentration reviews, income projections—turn a market statistic into a service event.
- Tax & estate planning
Schwab tests its pricing power on HNW clients
New pricing on $10 million-and-up accounts gives RIAs a concrete answer next time a wealthy client asks why independent advice costs more.
- Practice management
Autonomy is the real test for AI agents
Ezra Group's directory scores 69 tools on an autonomy scale, turning a noisy market into a purchase checklist.
- Recruiting & transitions
LPL's Merrill breakaway profile omits the economics
The release confirms a 17-year Merrill veteran chose independence, but offers none of the numbers an advisor would need to model a similar move.
- Recruiting & transitions
Raymond James hires Schwab custody veteran for client experience
For advisors weighing hybrid platforms against independent custody, the hire tests whether relationship quality, not payout grids, decides the next platform competition.
- Practice management
FINNY AI bets advisors will pay for growth, not seats
Pay-as-you-grow software pricing sounds aligned until a vendor's definition of a win differs from the advisor's.
5 stories
- Practice management
Pay-to-play rescission rewires public-plan compliance
The SEC's proposal to rescind Rule 206(4)-5 would end a two-year penalty clock for advisers with government clients and hand the compliance question to the states.
- Products & portfolios
BCRED's 5% gate puts the semi-liquid clock on the RIA
Blackstone's $77 billion private credit fund is paying out 75% of queued requests over 90 days; the redemption calendar is now the advisor's problem.
- Practice management
Cheaper AI tokens keep raising advisory tech bills
A single 50,000-token planning task explains why advisory firms should watch the meter more than the unit price.
- Practice management
The SEC would scrap the pay-to-play rule. The two-year ban is still law.
The SEC's proposal would end the two-year ban on government client work after political contributions, but the rule stays in force until a final vote and the 60-day comment clock hasn't started.
- Practice management
PEP growth makes the pooled plan a client-review staple
A 44.8% jump in pooled employer plan adoption means the option now belongs in every annual plan review.