RIA acquisitions through Sept. 22, 2026, ran 19% below 2025 pace

RIA acquisition activity through Sept. 22, 2026, ran 19% below the same period in 2025, Financial Advisor Magazine reported on Oct. 21. The pace threatens to end seven straight quarters of record dealmaking.

Cerulli estimates that 35% of financial advisors, responsible for 40% of industry assets, expect to retire within the next decade, according to the column. That sets the supply of sellers by age rather than by deal counts, while private capital keeps pursuing advisory businesses and larger platforms keep shopping for scale.

The column says buyers are rewarding firms with transferable revenue, leadership depth and operating infrastructure. Those are practices that can hold client relationships after the founder leaves, fold into a larger platform and add revenue without proportional overhead. Its test is blunt: a practice that runs on one advisor's memory and calendar can be excellent and still fail it. A thinner market likely raises that bar rather than lowering it, because buyers with fewer deals to do can afford to wait for the ones that clear it.

Those criteria read the same whether the successor is a junior partner or a platform. Transferable revenue and leadership depth are built before a founder goes to market, not negotiated at signing, which makes internal succession and an external sale the same preparation conducted with different counterparties.

The column puts no multiple on any of this, and the 19% figure counts transactions, not prices.