The 150 largest fee-only financial planning firms manage a combined $894.8 billion across more than 815,000 client accounts, according to this year's edition of the RIA Leaders rankings.
Using the below criteria from Financial Planning, data partner COMPLY gathered the rankings by scraping registered investment advisory firms' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The resulting group of firms spans 3,880 financial advisors and nearly 10,450 employees.
Follow this link to see FP's list, and check out the cover story of the 2024 RIA Leaders, "How consolidation is testing fiduciary duty in RIAs." For a listing of the top 20 firms in the rankings based on their assets under management, click here.
Notes: FP's data partner for the RIA Leaders feature, COMPLY, produced the below rankings by applying the following six criteria to firms' required SEC Form ADV filings in September 2024:
- Firms must have zero registered representatives of a broker-dealer.
- At least 50% of the firm's clients must be individuals or high net worth individuals.
- Firms must not list commissions as a compensation arrangement.
- Firms must have more than zero financial planning clients.
- Firms must not list commission-taking businesses in "other business activities."
- Firms cannot be affiliated under common ownership with commission-taking businesses.
In the absence of an official regulatory classification and definition for the titles "financial planner" or "financial advisor," FP is using the closest available figure available through Form ADV requiring firms to state the number of employees "registered with one or more state securities authorities as investment adviser representatives."
