Cerulli expects 8.6% of US advisors to change firms, putting $3.4 trillion in play

Cerulli Associates expects 8.6% of U.S. financial advisors to change firms this year, a migration the Boston research and consulting firm sizes at roughly $3.4 trillion in client assets in play. Its advice for the broker-dealers that stand to lose those books is to lean harder on technology, firm branding and specialized client services, and to do it while handing advisors more freedom without giving up the support that has long defined the channel. InvestmentNews, which reported the findings, places the moment in one of the busiest recruiting markets on record, which is the context that makes the details of the pitch worth reading rather than the rate alone.

Technology is where Cerulli sees the most room to stand out. Among advisors who joined a new broker-dealer within the past three years, 57% told the firm that technology played a part in the decision, and the report singles out open-architecture platforms and tools advisors can customize as a source of advantage. The bill for that advantage runs high: the InvestmentNews coverage links to a related story on Ameriprise's $1 billion AI spend, one measure of what platform leadership now costs the firms chasing it.

Cerulli frames the underlying trade-off as one of control. Michael Rose, a director and co-head of the firm's wealth management practice, said advisors given more discretion in selecting the tools and resources that fit their practices gain a stronger sense of command along with a better ability to meet changing client needs. "Firms that can provide increased flexibility with institutional support will be better positioned to attract advisors," he said. What the report leaves open is where flexibility stops being a selling point and starts eroding the support model, because the advisors it describes are pursuing flexibility, better economics and different client-service models at the same time.

All three items on Cerulli's list are scale purchases, which is why the concentration figures that follow matter to the retention argument as much as the preference data does.

Stated preference and recorded movement point the same direction. Seventy-one percent of advisors told Cerulli they would pick an independent channel if they changed affiliations, with independent RIAs ranking as the most desirable destination. The counted flow agrees: in a separate ISS Market Intelligence report, retail-focused RIAs drew 9,525 representatives from other channels between 2021 and 2025, while independent broker-dealers added 5,780, a difference of 3,745 representatives over five years, tilted toward the model Cerulli's respondents say they want. That is an awkward backdrop for a retention playbook premised on making the employee channel more attractive.

The RIA channel's own composition helps explain why it keeps drawing. About 85% of its firms, a group ISS sizes at roughly 35,000, employ five representatives at most, which the ISS report treats as an opening for aggregators pursuing acquisitions. That long tail is acquisition inventory and a recruiting pool at once, and the same small books are the ones both buyers and recruiters work.

Broker-dealers are doing the defending with fewer, larger firms. The coverage notes that the channel is narrowing to fewer, larger players just as the pitch to advisors has to change, and the arithmetic is stark: the 25 biggest firms manage 94% of all broker-dealer assets, according to Cerulli, and advisors at the five largest average $187 million each at year-end 2025 against $152 million across the top 25, the channel's highest per-advisor productivity. Scale of that order funds the platform spending Cerulli recommends, and it gathers the assets most at risk and the budgets available to protect them onto the same short list of firms.

InvestmentNews notes a further pressure on those firms: an aging advisor force. Retirement and recruiting are separate exits that land in the same place on a firm's books, and the three-part pitch Cerulli recommends is aimed squarely at the competitive one. Nothing on the technology side answers a succession problem.

The 57% deserves a narrower reading than it invites. Its population is advisors who joined a new broker-dealer in the past three years, which makes it a measure of what mattered during a search rather than of what keeps an advisor in place, and it records a factor rather than a ranking: that a majority of recent joiners weighed technology says nothing about where it finished against pay, service model or a firm's reputation. Cerulli's own list of what advisors are chasing, with better economics on it, keeps economics in view.

Cerulli's 8.6% is a forecast for the year, so next year's rate is the cleanest read on whether the platform pitch changes anything. If technology is the retention tool the report suggests, the firms that open their platforms earliest should see their share of that traffic decline; if the flows keep running the way ISS counted them, the migration rate is measuring something a customization menu cannot reach. Either way, the $187 million average at the five largest broker-dealers is what this market prices against, and it is the size of book that makes each one of those 8.6% worth a call.