Fee-only RIA asset share falls to 34% among $5bn-plus firms, Cerulli finds

True fee-only fiduciary RIAs held 34% of assets among firms managing at least $5 billion at the end of 2025, down from 42% in 2020, per Cerulli Associates via InvestmentNews. Hybrid RIAs with brokerage businesses held steady at 51% across the five years; independent RIAs carrying insurance licenses doubled their share to 14%.

Cerulli counted 121 true fee-only firms above the $5 billion mark in 2025, up from 83 in 2020, a 7.8% compound annual growth rate. Hybrid RIAs grew 12.4% a year, from 104 to 186 firms; insurance-licensed RIAs grew from seven to 36, a 37.3% annual rate. Credent Wealth Management, an Indiana fee-only RIA with $5 billion in assets under management, commissioned the study.

David Hefty, Credent's co-founder and CEO, said some buyers price offers partly on the revenue they expect from moving acquired clients out of recurring fees and into commission products.

"Sometimes these buyers are factoring in the percentage of assets that they're going to move out of a 75-basis-point recurring revenue situation, maybe put into a 5-7% equity index commission up front, or a life insurance commission, which is 50% to 100% year-one premium," Hefty said. "Sometimes the advisors on the selling end don't really know [or] understand this."

Brendan Powers, the Cerulli senior director who managed the project, said the vocabulary needs sharpening now that three RIA subsegments exist where "fiduciary" and "RIA" were historically treated as interchangeable. He told InvestmentNews that the fee-only growth lag does not reflect weaker service, attributing it to acquisitions: fee-only firms being bought and firms acquiring an affiliated broker-dealer.

Hefty said an owner weighing a bid should ask how much of the price depends on moving your clients' assets into commission products. Two offers at the same headline number can carry different economics if one assumes product revenue the seller never generated.