AE Wealth's two-word growth advice: 'not right now'
At AE Wealth, 12% organic growth comes from advisors who defer good ideas and build complementary teams.
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The platform arms race turns to software and services
Edward Jones's Quicken stake, Siebert's FusionIQ pact, and Arbo's CPA acquisition show the platform fight has moved to the tools around the advisor.
Louis Barajas: listen first, products later, for underserved clients
Underserved clients need listening and cultural fluency before any product — skills AI cannot replace.
WealthReach's $1M seed targets advisor search visibility
The advisor-marketing startup's small seed round goes after the industry's oldest weakness: being found before the first meeting.
HighWater's $2.4B U.S. Bank team lands on LPL via Quotient
The San Diego team's move shows bank employee advisors are the latest front in the independent channel's recruiting war.
Social Security's 2032 math rewrites retirement plans
The trust funds are set to empty in 2032 or 2033, and current law then cuts benefits by 19% to 23%. Retirement plans should be built on that case now.
Eagle Point commits $1.3 billion mezzanine to Anthropic data center
A $14 billion middle-market manager takes the largest mezzanine position in a $16 billion AI data-center project financing.
CFP Board's rollover guide turns fiduciary duty into a checklist
A $1 trillion annual decision now has a documented process. Advisors who follow it can show their work; clients who read it know what to ask.
The vacation home is the succession conversation clients skip
WealthManagement.com's guide walks advisors through an option-to-purchase structure that lets children decide the family house's fate at the second spouse's death.
A founder exit: Wealth Enhancement buys Weinand's $644M
A one-advisor Olympia RIA trades $644 million for a platform, adding another retirement chapter to the industry's record M&A pace.
Ex-Morgan Stanley advisor says firm retaliated over bias complaint
A federal lawsuit traces how the wirehouse handled her accommodations and confidential address, giving independent firms a recruiting document with a compliance warning.
The bedsore approach to retirement marketing
Fisher Investments wins by repeating one simple sentence until boomers remember it, and any RIA can do the same without a media budget.
Carson taps ex-Osaic exec Peterson to lead independent recruiting
Kevin Peterson brings a custody-and-brokerage resume to the firm's independent channel.
Georgia advisor gets 20 years for $400 million Ponzi
Drive Planning's founder receives the maximum 20-year sentence and a $233.8 million restitution order; two executives also go to prison.
Drive Planning founder and CEO gets 20 years for a $380 million Ponzi scheme
For RIAs, the maximum sentence in a Georgia Ponzi case is a due-diligence lesson: fake collateral and borrowed money can pass for diligence until someone reads the first wire.
Siebert deepens FusionIQ investment with 10-year pact
The broker-dealer is adding capital and a decade-long roadmap across wealth, institutional and digital-asset lines.
Arax uses Kate Johnson's philanthropy award as a recruiting proof point
An Ashton Thomas advisor's decade of Wyoming nonprofit work becomes a recruitment talking point for the $43 billion firm.
SEC's AI exam is a governance audit
Examiners want evidence of accountability for AI, and the paper trail should be built before the exam arrives.
AI drafts, humans decide: the new advice divide
Survey finds 72% of Americans want a human leading AI-supported financial decisions.
LPL, Cetera, Raymond James, NewEdge add advisor teams
A four-firm hiring week pulled about $534 million in disclosed client assets into the independent channel.
July CFP exam draws record turnout; pay premium grows
A record July exam class and a 15% pay increase point to a younger, better-compensated advisor pipeline.
Diversify adds Texas and Boston practices, crosses $14B
Two practices joined the Sandy, Utah platform with nearly $400 million in assets, lifting the firm past $14 billion without outside capital.
Arbo buys Cone CPA, adding tax and CFO services
The Atlanta firm adds human tax and CFO expertise atop its IRS-transcript engine.
Schwab CEO credits Fidelity retreat for record RIA inflows
Schwab logged $80.2B in Q2 net-new RIA assets; Wurster ties the surge to Fidelity's long/short financing hike.
Crowd Street and Equity Trust shorten the retirement route to private funds
A shared login and streamlined account links cut friction for moving self-directed IRA money into private-market strategies.
Wealth's talent war moves to the C-suite
Four C-suite hires in one week show the wealth talent war moving from advisor teams to the executives who control distribution, recruiting, and planning.
Stratos Wealth's 12th SEI-era deal adds $400M Illinois partner
The Naperville firm adds $400 million and a new state to Stratos's SEI-backed network.
Kestra hires BlackRock's Kelly Apple to lead wealth management
The Austin broker-dealer and RIA ends a year-plus search by putting a BlackRock distribution veteran in the post its president had been covering.
UC Investments sells $1 billion private equity block to HarbourVest
A roughly $1 billion private equity sale by UC Investments shows what institutional liquidity in the secondaries market costs right now.
Invesco puts a CIO at the center of its custom solutions bet
A unified platform with separate global and investment chiefs sets a template for asset managers courting RIAs and family offices.
Conte Wealth leaves Cambridge for LPL with $1.4 billion
The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania firm's exit from Cambridge is the latest evidence that in the independent channel, size has become the winning pitch.
Cohen & Steers' new realty fund takes in $50M
The filing adds a private realty vehicle to the asset manager's push for wealth allocator capital.
Avenir Growth fund closes at $48.9 million in eight days
A Form D shows the private equity vehicle was fully subscribed by the time it reached EDGAR.
JR Wealth Management adds online reputation defense
The New York firm now advises clients on search results and AI summaries that precede the first meeting.
AdvisorFinder Intelligence grades RIAs' AI visibility
Pricing starts at $99 a month; the service scores appearances in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
Edward Jones takes hybrid platform direct to next-gen investors
The brokerage's Digital Managed Solutions pairs an app with a human, aiming to capture Gen Z and millennial clients before they need a full advisory account.
Managed accounts become the private-markets front door
Schwab, Morgan Stanley, and Invesco are routing alternatives through managed accounts, redrawing the economics and changing how advisors reach illiquid assets.
MAI's double RIA deal is a bet on geography
The Carlyle-backed firm enters Atlanta and deepens California, moving from accumulating assets to owning specific markets.
Specialty evergreen structures are outgrowing interval-fund staples
3(c)(7) funds and operating companies are pulling ahead of interval funds as asset managers push private-market strategies to wealth clients.
Siebert and Unusual Whales to build ETFs from market data
The partnership tests whether a retail following built on market data can win the advisor trust most ETF launches never get.
Security Benefit's Blueprint annuity lands on Barron's 2026 best list
The three-year surrender charge is the feature RIAs should weigh most.
Trust decides who gets to deploy AI in wealth management
AI is moving from drafting to acting. The firms that can say who answers when it goes wrong will be the ones trusted to deploy.
O'Reilly family practice leaves LPL for Osaic with $250 million
A second-generation St. Louis practice joins Millenia Investments, headed by the founder's onetime protégé.
Citi Wealth hires J.P. Morgan trusts chief for global planning role
Adam Clark, who ran a 500-professional global trusts and estates operation at J.P. Morgan, will lead Citi Wealth's planning chain from November.
LPL recruits $160M Edward Jones advisor Chris Stockton
The hire puts LPL in the business-exit niche, where advisors who guide owners through transitions are a growing recruiting target.
Wealth Enhancement buys a $644 million Washington State tuck-in
The Olympia, Wash. acquisition pushes the Minnesota consolidator past $160.7 billion and extends a summer run of niche-focused purchases.
Confluence launches POINT to cut manual report-validation work
The AI layer plugs an automated checklist and a plain-English interface into Confluence's existing products.
Schwab and Morgan Stanley push managed accounts into awkward territory
With platform breadth becoming a competitive lever, the moves give advisors new vehicles for long-short equity and private-market access inside managed accounts.
AI forces the data-warehousing question at RIAs
Client files at a typical firm live in four systems. AI needs them clean and in one place.
Edward Jones's Quicken stake attacks the planner's organizing problem
The brokerage's minority stake puts a consumer finance app inside the advisor-client conversation, betting that organization is where planning begins.