Features: archive
Every Features story in Advisors, newest first. 49 stories
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- Recruiting & transitions
Recruiting scoreboard: Charles Schwab leads August asset growth among public wealth firms
Month-end client assets, net new assets, advisor counts and recruited assets for Charles Schwab, Raymond James and Stifel, from each firm's own SEC filings.
- Practice management
Osaic adds $576M Stifel book; founder's daughter cites succession help
Kintra hires a $355 million Commonwealth practice, and Merrill raises its 2027 growth award to $7.5 million in revenue.
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- The Advisor's Note
Betterment survey: 75% of advised investors use AI
3% of the 1,001 surveyed would consider an AI replacement advisor, Betterment Advisor Solutions found.
- The Advisor's Note
SEC clears Finra rule letting broker-dealers market projected returns
Finra's Rule 2210 ban becomes conditional, but approval conditions and the effective date are not specified.
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- Succession & selling a firm
Multi-owner firms with $100M–$1B in assets draw 48% higher multiple
An FP Transitions author writing in Wealth Solutions Report asks owners whether growth reached margins and whether the firm could run without them.
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- Tax & estate planning
Musk's SpaceX share pledge can't enter an unclaimed Trump Account
Treasury opened the accounts Oct. 1, 2026, and until a parent claims one it can take only government and charity money plus the $1,000 pilot contribution.
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- Products & portfolios
8VC files $20.4M fund with zero sold; Bregal reports $80.8M co-invest sold
Coatue, Ares and D. E. Shaw also filed zero-sold offerings; Buccaneer and Almanack reported fully sold funds.
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- Practice management
F&G finds 51% of pre-retirees plan to semi-retire rather than stop working
A same-day WTW survey found 36% of U.S. employees feel financially secure, down from 46% in 2019.
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- The Advisor's Note
Mercer Advisors: roughly half of H1 2026 net new assets came from custodian referrals
S&P says the fees paid to custodian partners could limit Mercer's margin expansion, the cost side of a channel the firm says supplies half its growth.
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- Succession & selling a firm
RIA deal count falls 17% as $5B sellers set record, DeVoe says
Mercer Advisors refinanced $1.9 billion in a Goldman Sachs-led loan, cutting the rate by 1.75 points and saying the savings will fund acquisitions.
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- Tax & estate planning
IRS Notice 2026-62 treats one 351 ETF conversion sequence as taxable
The guidance expresses no view on funds that keep assets matching their strategy, and Baird's Steffen says sound conversions remain viable.
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- Products & portfolios
Ballentine Income Opportunities Fund III files Form D with no total offering amount
The pooled fund names Ballentine Partners, LLC and Ballentine Funds GP, LLC as related persons and reports $0 sold to date.
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- Recruiting & transitions
Wirehouse recruiting packages reach up to 425% of revenue, Diamond report says
The first-half transition report counted 932 experienced-advisor recruits against 1,449 departures at the four wirehouses.
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- Practice management
Pathstone plans 77 client events in 2026 as assets reach $200 billion
The firm credits the events for referrals, while acquisitions account for much of the asset growth.
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- The Advisor's Note
Orion quotes vendors up to $20,000 a month for platform data
Vendors told WealthTech Today the quoted fee reaches that level; Fidelity and BNY Pershing are also changing platform access terms.
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- Succession & selling a firm
Hightower Signature to add $1 billion Synergy, a partner since 2017
The announced deal would add 15 employees and push the Hightower Signature channel past $40 billion in assets.
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- Tax & estate planning
A 60-day IRA rollover can bridge a cash crunch, with two rules to track
IRAHelp says the once-a-year limit counts traditional and Roth IRAs together, and a missed deadline can leave the distribution taxable and penalized.
- Tax & estate planning
Tax Foundation counts roughly 40 state tax measures; Colorado top rate would reach 8.4%
Amendment 87 would apply top initial rates of 7.4%, 7.9% and 8.4% above $500,000, $750,000 and $1 million, replacing the state's 4.4% flat tax.
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- Products & portfolios
Brown Advisory files $5.4M DCVC-linked fund in Form D batch from $80K to $227M
The October 6 notices give offering sizes and first-sale dates, and none of the fees, marks or liquidity terms an advisor needs before a client allocation.
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- Recruiting & transitions
Fidelity tells sub-$100M custody clients to move as Schwab stops short of a promise
The threshold counts assets held at Fidelity rather than total firm AUM, and Schwab cites the 11,000 micro-practices it already serves while stopping short of a promise.
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- Practice management
Ascensus launches a participant-referral workflow for plan advisers
The recordkeeper says the tool links 401(k) savers with the adviser serving their employer plan, across a book of more than 16 million participants and $1.3 trillion in administered assets.
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- The Advisor's Note
Pontera pitches AI trust layer after OpenAI agents probe SEC sites
The 401(k) software firm's credential-sharing dispute with Fidelity is unresolved as Schwab prepares its own agent.
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- Succession & selling a firm
Fidelity tells sub-$100 million RIAs to grow or move by June 2027
The notices went to affected firms, and the threshold counts assets held at Fidelity rather than total firm AUM.
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- Tax & estate planning
SEC proposes exam route to accredited investor status
The Sept. 30 rulemaking would also loosen interval-fund redemptions and cap performance fees, which would change how advisors size a private credit sleeve.
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- Products & portfolios
AlpInvest and Blue Sky file secondaries funds; Bain and Crescent file credit funds
The September 29 Form D batch carried two secondaries vehicles, a direct lending fund and a credit risk sharing fund, with three of the four reporting no capital raised.
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- Recruiting & transitions
UBS hires Merrill's John Pham and Jimmy Yip below $10M production minimum
The pair produced $7.5 million against the $10 million bar for a 16-year package paying 550% of revenue, on a book sources put at $575 million to $1.2 billion.
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- Practice management
Bitwise's crypto models rebalance on Vise's engine, alongside the rest of the book
The crypto sleeve now follows the same rebalancing schedule and tax treatment as every other holding, which is the version of digital assets that scales across a book.
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- The Advisor's Note
Schwab's cash shelf turns the sweep into a product
Save's Market Savings puts principal-protected yield in front of more than 16,000 RIAs on Schwab's platform, and gives the next custody renewal a number it never had to defend.
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- Succession & selling a firm
In RIA sales, the entity chart beats the multiple
The July 2025 tax law made the real number in a practice sale depend on a structure the owner chose years before any buyer called.
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- Tax & estate planning
The succession gap is a price nobody wrote down
Founders who never put a number on the internal buyout do not avoid the sale; they hand the terms to whichever outside buyer drafts them first.
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- Products & portfolios
$85,000 sleeve is the new front door
Series vehicles that fill in five days are making master structures and administrators, not deal flow, the gate that controls alternatives in advisor accounts.
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- Recruiting & transitions
Merrill sells the map while advisors get paid in equity
The same book now trades in two markets, and only one of them seats the advisor who built it.
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- Practice management
The compliance manual is the next deal term
Two bipartisan bills would rewrite ensemble pay and elder-exploitation duties, and the repricing lands on the practice before either statute does.
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- The Advisor's Note
The RIA bidding war has moved to the holding period
Eight ways to fund an RIA purchase, and the one term that decides whether the seller's team is still there when the buyer's clock runs out.
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- Succession & selling a firm
Three exits, three prices, one book
The same client list got three prices this week: a $1.3 billion custody move at 25 basis points, a wirehouse grid paying above its own top rate, and a House-passed ESOP standard.
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- Tax & estate planning
The October decisions that set the withdrawal rate
Three dated checkpoints — an excess 2025 IRA contribution, a federal healthcare subsidy that needs a stress case, and a fraud deduction the House voted to restore — show why the fall calendar moves the spending plan more than an allocation call does.
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- Products & portfolios
The alternatives shelf splits into $2.8B pooled funds and $18,000 SPVs
The September 15 Form D batch holds both ends of the private market, and the diligence that matters now sits on the wrapper, not the manager.
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- Recruiting & transitions
Six Modern Wealth advisors left as it acquired $710 million in assets
Consolidators can buy a book; the week showed they cannot buy the advisors who run it, and the recruiting market is repricing on that difference.
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- Practice management
The AI race moves to what happens after the meeting
Salesforce's Agentic Advisor turns meeting output into prioritized action, and the practices that wire it into owned tasks first will consolidate assets and compound referrals before smaller rivals can afford the integration.
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- The Advisor's Note
Mariner's $175 million bot budget is a supervision purchase
At $250,000 a bot, the AI gap in wealth management is now a data-custody and review-standard problem.