Advisors archive
Every Advisors story, newest first. 892 stories
40 stories
- Tax & estate planning
Proposed rules map employer contributions to Trump Accounts
Advisors get their first concrete look at how employers can contribute — and where the plan can go wrong.
- Tax & estate planning
Mark Cuban and Ro Khanna spar over wealth-tax loans
The dispute gives advisors a concrete opening to raise liquidity and domicile questions with founder clients who are wealthy on paper.
- Succession & selling a firm
MAI's $1B double buy lands two RIAs on a Carlyle-backed platform
The acquisition puts two planning-heavy RIAs under a Carlyle-backed umbrella, changing the ownership math for their advisors.
- Practice management
Nonqualified deferred compensation takes over at the 401(k) ceiling
A niche plan for key employees gives fee-pressured advisors a product with no menu price.
- Practice management
Europe's wealth taxes split over what counts as wealth
A Tax Foundation map of Europe's 2026 wealth taxes shows Norway, Spain and Switzerland taxing total net wealth, while France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands hit only certain assets.
- Practice management
Schwab's 2025 RIA Benchmarking Study gives firms a yardstick
The 1,288-firm survey sets a comparative baseline for growth, pricing, and staffing. The data are self-reported and limited to Schwab-custodied firms; treat them accordingly.
- Practice management
California's billionaire tax leaves a ten-month residency gap
Advisors should ask California clients about domicile before the January 1 snapshot locks in.
- Practice management
NASAA tallies 1,650 senior-abuse probes as deepfake scams rise
The enforcement count hands RIA principals a number and a date to raise with clients.
- Practice management
The last mile of retirement is a spending problem
A new IRIC white paper makes the case for building spending permission into the plan, rather than hoping clients find it on their own.
- Products & portfolios
A missed after-tax election costs 40 percent unless caught early
EPCRS prices a skipped after-tax election at 40 percent of the missed amount; a plan can dodge the charge by opening a nine-month make-up window.
- Practice management
The Labor Department's lost-and-found database locates forgotten retirement plans
The SECURE 2.0 search tool gives advisors a fresh annual-review ritual — just don't mistake a match for a payout.
- Recruiting & transitions
NASAA cuts retest wait to 60 days after a third failure
Failed candidates can retake the exam four months sooner.
- Recruiting & transitions
The Foreman Rial Group's wirehouse jump is a pricing lesson
The Foreman Rial Group's move to Morgan Stanley shows what a lift-out check must cover — and the risk the advisors take on.
- Products & portfolios
One in eight active large-cap funds beats the index over a decade
A one-in-eight decade-long win rate demands a written thesis for every active large-cap sleeve.
- Recruiting & transitions
A $14 million Merrill team jumps to Rockefeller in Ohio
The hire extends Rockefeller's run of wirehouse recruits and puts a 43-year Merrill veteran on a family-office platform.
- Practice management
Finra proposes a ten-day pause on suspicious account moves
Brokerages would gain a ten-day window to stop fraud. Advisors would need to explain the pause to a client.
- Practice management
FINRA proposes fresh list when arbitrator selections fail
A rule filing would replace random substitutions with a new list when the first round of arbitrator picks falls short.
- Recruiting & transitions
A 35-day round trip shows the risk in a wirehouse transition
David Powell left Morgan Stanley for RBC and was back in a month. The episode is a lesson in what a shared book means for a transition package.
- Products & portfolios
Active's losing decade turns advice into the product
Morningstar's scoreboard gives advisors a defensible reason to sell planning and tax work instead of fund picks.
- Succession & selling a firm
Cerulli: One in Four Retiring Advisors Face Succession Uncertainty
With a third of advisors set to retire in the next decade, succession-ready talent will decide who sells on their own terms.
- Tax & estate planning
The out-spouse is a planning client, not a bystander
The great wealth transfer will be won in the couple meeting, where the out-spouse often sits quietly.
- Tax & estate planning
Medicare's $50 GLP-1 bridge lands in the retirement budget
Roughly 4 million Part D beneficiaries qualify for Medicare-covered weight-loss drugs at $50 a month. The program ends in 2027.
- Tax & estate planning
Beneficiary forms and titles trump the will
The will says who gets what. The beneficiary form says who actually gets it. When they disagree, the form wins.
- Practice management
Your website is the source ChatGPT cites most
Advisor-controlled pages account for 45% of ChatGPT's citations when it recommends an advisor, according to a new study.
- Practice management
Retire SMART's $800M book: 25% of revenue into marketing
An Omaha RIA built its book organically by treating educational marketing as a line item.
- Tax & estate planning
Four retirement paths beyond the full-time countdown
Introduce financial independence, sabbaticals, Coast FIRE, and semi-retirement early, and the default exit date becomes a deliberate choice.
- Practice management
Vibe-coded tools are building on top of the advisor stack
A new Nerd's Eye View analysis finds that most advisor-built AI tools are supplements to existing platforms, not substitutes — and the build-versus-buy math has shifted less than the hype implies.
- Practice management
A three-person team runs $240 million on a meeting agenda
A two-sided meeting agenda, refined over 20 years, is the system behind a $240 million practice.
- Tax & estate planning
The client's gut is financial data
Kitces & Carl episode 196: feelings belong in the plan, not just the spreadsheet.
- Practice management
Most of the $124 trillion transfer lands with women
Seventy percent of women have never met an advisor; the first meeting is where the transfer's largest client block will be won.
- Practice management
YCharts folds Zephyr SMA data into proposals; Advyzon ships AI suite
Two upgrades inside existing platforms push RIAs to test built-in features against the tools they already run.
- Tax & estate planning
Why the client who agrees to sell still won't sell
A Kitces.com guest post separates the endowment effect into loss aversion, identity, and anchoring. Logic won't cure any of them.
- Succession & selling a firm
Two failed successions later, Kahler Financial sold to an accounting firm
Rick Kahler watched two hand-picked successors walk away before selling his RIA to a local accounting firm. A case study in making failure survivable.
- Practice management
FINNY prices marketing on a share of the assets it wins
A $50 monthly platform fee plus a 20-basis-point asset charge makes marketing a recurring cost of growth.
- Products & portfolios
Custodian's checking overhaul leaves clients with unequal cash protections
Advisors need to map which guarantee sits behind each cash balance as a Westlake, Texas custodian keeps the savings from an investor checking revamp.
- Products & portfolios
Franklin Templeton packages private markets into model portfolios
A single-subscription wrapper brings Franklin Templeton's private-markets models into the standard advisory workflow. The tax treatment will determine whether the SMA-style label holds up.
- Products & portfolios
Fund launches test advisors on the wrapper and its fees
A round of ETF and alts launches puts wrapper structure and fee disclosure at the center of advisor due diligence.
- Practice management
Edward Jones's $5,000 digital pilot takes aim at the next generation
A salaried remote advisor and a 0.65% fee give the 20,500-broker firm a product for clients too small for a branch relationship.
- Practice management
RIAs push trust and estate in-house despite a thin advisor bench
The services are moving in-house faster than the advisor expertise to staff them, survey data suggest.
- Recruiting & transitions
LPL's road to 90% retention runs through smaller Commonwealth books
The commitment rate sits in the low 80s and is lopsided: larger, faster-growing Commonwealth teams have signed, so the 90% target depends on smaller practices.