Advisor moves outnumber custodian changes 25-to-1 as Schwab reports record flows

Our tracking logged 1,036 advisor moves in the past 30 days and 41 custodian changes, about 25 moves for every custodian switch. Advisor moves were the largest category in the 30-day log, ahead of 742 announced deals and 633 completed ones. Custodian changes were the smallest of the twelve categories we follow, behind 44 office openings and 50 items of deal talk.

The two counts do not measure the same thing. An advisor who changes employers can leave custody exactly where it was, and a single custodian change can sit behind one practice or a hundred. So the 25-to-1 figure describes how often each event appears in our log, not the share of advisors who stayed put.

Schwab reported a record $190.4 billion in total net new assets for the third quarter. Schwab Advisor Services took in $120.1 billion of that, up 47% from a year earlier, roughly 63% of the companywide total.

Schwab also plans to raise its RIA referral minimum to $5 million. The figure alone does not say what the minimum is measured against or when it takes effect.

A 30-day window is a short sample, and event counts weight a single large team the same as a solo practice. None of the 41 custodian changes in this window is broken out by size in our records.