The 2027 brackets arrive early; the calendar is the edge
Bloomberg Tax's projections give advisors a planning window months before the IRS publishes—and the window is the only part of the release that pays.
September 14
The RIA Desk 29 stories this week · 213 total
The business of independent advice: growth, custody, fees, talent, and what it all means for the firm you run.
Mariner's $175M bot army is an integration budget
If 700 bots can absorb the back office of a $630 billion administrator, integration capacity becomes a recruiting asset and every other acquirer's underwriting changes.
SignatureFD carves out its ninth niche: franchise owners
The Atlanta RIA now runs nine practice groups on a $10 billion base, betting narrow depth beats a national brand, and the launch is only as durable as the résumé behind it.
The pro bono movement endures on the work advisors cannot bill
Twenty-five years after Scott Kahan organized pro bono planning for 9/11 families, the profession's volunteer template still rests on the estate and benefit work no fee schedule can hold.
DOL's alts safe harbor trades fiduciary judgment for paperwork
A process safe harbor would give plan committees a paper defense and send the bill to participants — a sharper objection than the access debate the rule was written around.
Silvercrest's Irish license is the easy half of its European build
A $25 billion UHNW advisor now has the regulatory footing to grow in Europe, and its own relationship math says that growth will be slow, human, and built one introduction at a time.
Arete Wealth builds an investment bank around its distribution
The $8 billion broker-dealer is betting its investor base can win corporate finance mandates that standalone boutiques have to rent.
Agentic AI's 2027 budget line belongs behind the advisor
Three wealth-tech leaders put the return in the work around the meeting, making next year's technology line item a staffing decision before it is a software one.
Clients keep the wallet until the tax saving gets a number
SEI's survey of 518 advisors and 302 wealthy investors finds clients want the tax figure first, and roughly half of advisors cannot produce one.
Hamachi patents a way to keep RIA data from the model
The award covers one method of masking client data before a model reads it, which is narrower than the sales pitch implies — and the right question for any advisor signing an AI contract is where that data sits while the model runs.
CFP Board's new scholarship targets the only supply that grows the industry
At $5,000, the award is a nudge, and the eligibility screen does the real work: it shuts out anyone already in financial services and leaves the first move to firms that reach candidates before a recruiter does.
AI budget share doubles as firms wait for proof
Vanilla, SS&C and FinTurk are pushing agents across the whole book, and the RIAs that buy the detection without the capacity to clear what it finds will pay for it twice.
Gen Z advisor churn is an onboarding problem a fee cut cannot solve
A custodian survey shows the youngest clients churning hardest while telling advisors the answer is digital, and the deeper number is that clients now use AI to interrogate the fee.
The PEP pitch sells fiduciary relief the contract keeps
Cerulli counts a tripling of pooled plans since 2021, and the monitoring duty employers supposedly shed is the one advisors now have to price.
Altruist's real-time API makes custody a data business
Arca has embedded Altruist's Realtime Custodial API into its platform, making the custodian's live data feed the real test of the partnership.
The RIA behind VanEck's first buffer ETF
Lido Advisors is subadvising the fund, renting VanEck's distribution while it keeps the strategy, team, and client book in-house.
Edelman's ADP deal pushes workplace-to-wealth funnel downmarket
The RIA keeps advice and the participant relationship while renting ADP's small-plan distribution, extending the retirement-to-wealth conversion model to employers that would never otherwise meet an Edelman sales force.
Feathery gives RIAs plain-English control over workflows
The new Robin assistant turns conversational updates into compliant, deployable workflows drawn from a pre-tested library.
Conquest drops 'Planning' and pivots to AI advice
The renamed fintech is positioning its Strategic Advice Manager as the engine for advisor, client and white-label experiences across wealth platforms.
Crenshaw lands at Venable as SEC shrinks to two
The former SEC commissioner's critiques of the private-markets push now arrive on law firm letterhead.
NIL moves athlete planning into the family kitchen
Advisors who educate a 17-year-old's parents now are underwriting the relationship a pro contract will fund later.
Silence, not taxes, is the real transfer risk
LendingTree, Fidelity and LegalShield surveys show heirs expecting money the older generation has not planned to give. Advisors should treat the gap as a retention event.
Pay-to-play repeal trades one rule for patchwork
The SEC wants to scrap Rule 206(4)-5; RIAs with public-plan clients should keep the contribution file they built under it.
Schwab courts Altruist advisors while Vanguard doubt lingers
Charles Schwab is dialing Altruist advisors to test whether the custodian's founding promise survives its $4.6 billion sale to Vanguard.
Solo RIAs are the succession blind spot the M&A boom leaves open
Most independent advisors will never sell to a consolidator, and the solo founder without a continuity plan is pricing the firm for a crisis before a buyer arrives.
Fidelity's record retirement balances make the case for contributions
The strongest quarterly gain in five years gives advisors an answer to clients weighing a savings pause.
Schwab tightens tax-aware SMA minimums to $10 million
The tenfold increase and portfolio-margin freeze move tax-loss harvesting upmarket and put custodian policy at the center of RIA suitability.
The Bank of Mom and Dad needs a process
Nearly a quarter of first-time buyers leaned on family money in 2025; the RIA that systematizes the 709, the GST allocation, and the title question will own the second gift as well as the first.
Arax gets a seat on CFP Board's career-changer pipeline
Cary Carbonaro's $125,000 scholarship is small money and a deliberate recruiting signal for Ashton Thomas and its parent.
UBS imports RIA playbook in Southern California push
A new Irvine hub and a $1.4 billion Bernstein team import the independent playbook into UBS's employee channel.
SEC private-access plan puts performance fees front and center
A reported SEC proposal would open private markets to more retail investors and allow advisers to charge performance-based fees more broadly, but the fee change is what will land in existing RIA contracts first.
Sowell builds an in-house tax team for $5 million households
The Arkansas RIA's Advanced Planning Group puts estate and tax depth behind Cache River Private Wealth — a build-versus-buy bet on keeping wealthy families.
Altruist pushes Hazel into full financial planning
Days after Vanguard said it would acquire Altruist for $4.6 billion, the custodian's AI tool now spans retirement, estate, tax and more—and works for advisors who custody elsewhere, a direct challenge to standalone planning software.
Orion adds BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard models to its tax engine
The TAMP is wrapping other managers' models in its tax technology, and Vanguard's participation shows the tax layer is becoming the product.
Altruist's AI planner is a wedge into rival custodians
The Hazel planning agent works over any custodian's books, putting the planning layer ahead of the custody account.
Grimes brings tax prep in-house as mid-sized RIAs chase retention
The $7 billion RIA's purchase of a Massachusetts tax shop, backed by Rise Growth, points to a tax and estate push among mid-sized firms and a bet on keeping $5 million-plus households.
Hightower bets its employee channel on Dispatch's data layer
The $28 million fintech's transition software turns back-office speed into a recruiting pitch for a $35 billion channel.
Banking for breakaways with the conflict removed
Fieldpoint Private exited wealth management before launching Benchmark with Max, a concession that makes the RIA banking pitch credible.
Record ETF launches hit an RIA shelf that barely moves
AdvizorPro's 13F data shows the average RIA portfolio added 4.5 ETFs in the second quarter while more than 1,000 new products launched; the incumbent issuers held shelf space.
Model portfolios are driving the RIA tech-ETF rotation
Q2 data shows RIA flows into semiconductor and AI funds tracked the tickers model portfolios already favor.