Firms don't have to tell advisors to chase wealthy clients and big accounts. Their pay policies often do it for them.
And judging by the base pay grids many large wealth managers have adopted for 2026, some "regional" brokerages are pushing advisors to pursue the big accounts once more commonly associated with large wirehouse competitors. Andrew Tasnady, an industry compensation consultant and the founder of Tasnady & Associates, said the trend is particularly evident in the compensation policies of regional firms such as Janney Montgomery Scott and RBC Wealth Management.
Both have changed their payouts in recent years in an apparent effort to encourage advisors to take on more assets under management. That's especially true for their advisors at the lower end of the revenue-production scale — those generating in the neighborhood of $400,000 to $600,000 a year.
Janney, the only regional firm to make a substantial change this year to the compensation tracked in Financial Planning's annual survey, has also been steadily lowering its payouts to advisors generating $1 million a year. It now offers $460,000 to advisors at the $1 million production level. That's
Follow these links for breakdowns of 2026 advisor base pay* at four different production levels:
Best advisor pay for the $400K producer - Best advisor pay for the $600K producer (live on April 15)
- Best advisor pay for the $1M producer (live on April 16)
- Best advisor pay for the $2M producer (live on April 17)
*All data is provided by the companies, compiled by Arizent and analyzed by Tasnady & Associates.
What pay at wirehouses and regional firms says about what those firms want
Tasnady said compensation at Janney and RBC tilts distinctly in favor of big producers and almost penalizes advisors at the tail end of the revenue scale. Janney, for instance, pays less than all other firms at the $400,000, $600,000 and $1 million production levels. It's only when advisors generate $2 million a year in revenue that total payout — at $1.08 million — exceeds many of its rivals.
"They're only paying 20% for $400,000 in production [$80,000], which is basically you either have to leave or join a team. It's really such a steep penalty payout," Tasnady said.
Compare that with other so-called regional firms, many of which remain accommodating to advisors on the lower end. Stifel, for instance, pays $175,000 to advisors at the $400,000 production level and $285,000 to advisors at the $600,000 level. Edward Jones offers $292,530 to advisors generating $600,000 a year. (That consists of $236,250 in base pay and an average of $56,280 in year-end bonuses, which vary with the profitability of individual offices.)
Tasnady said wirehouses have long structured their compensation grids to encourage advisors to generate revenue by taking on more client assets and to achieve growth in specific ways, such as by adding new assets, new large clients or loans.
"UBS is an example of that," Tasnady said. "They really are almost telling you, 'We're not interested, really, in having you coming here at the $400,000 or $600,000 level,' relative to the other firms."
Regional firms, by contrast, "have been historically much more welcoming to smaller and mid-sized advisors," Tasnady said. "They provide higher payout rates, and they're very much more tolerant in terms of pressure to grow and get bigger."
Some regionals, though, are now breaking that pattern.
While most firms leave pay unchanged, others combat 'grid creep'
Janney's 8% drop in total compensation for $1 million producers in 2026 comes after a year in which both Janney and RBC made changes to their basic grids. Last year, Janney reduced its pay for advisors with $600,000 in annual revenue production
Tasnady said Janney this year instituted what's known in the industry as a "grid stretch." That refers to a series of small changes essentially requiring advisors to generate a little more revenue to make the same amount of take-home pay as they did the previous year.
Many firms will stretch their compensation thresholds, Tasnady said, to combat a separate phenomenon known as "grid creep" — the tendency for advisor payouts, pushed up by market gains for the assets they have under management, to increase steadily over time.
"If you're trying to keep your payout rate in a percentage term steady, you're always having to make some reductions in your compensation rates to partially offset that," Tasnady said. "I've never seen firms completely offset grid creep. But they partially offset it, one of the options is just to do a grid stretch."
A spokesman for Janney, a Philadelphia-based firm with more than 900 advisors, said the update for $1 million producers in 2026 was "not a dramatic change and more a reflection of their revenue increase."
Meanwhile, three of the traditional wirehouses — Merrill, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo — were careful this year to leave base payouts unchanged. The one exception among the Wall Street stalwarts was UBS, which rolled back unpopular compensation changes that had led to increased advisor departures
As a result, UBS advisors generating above seven figures will get 1% increases: Those at the $1 million production level will go from making $490,000 to $495,000 this year, and those generating $2 million will get a bump from $1.02 million to $1.03 million.
Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, cut the amount of deferred compensation it offers but is replacing whatever is lost with upfront pay. Unlike most changes to base pay, Morgan Stanley's is likely to prove popular because it means advisors will take home more at the end of the year.
Regional firms versus wirehouses
To Phil Waxelbaum, the founder of the advisor-recruiting firm Masada Consulting, some regional firms' apparent approach to pay policies raises a fundamental question about how firms are categorized in the first place. There was a time when many large wealth managers were truly "regional." They had their headquarters somewhere other than New York or on the West Coast and often worked with clients living in the same part of the country.
Now, though, many of these firms have offices throughout the country and are not necessarily devoted to the types of clients largely ignored by Wall Street firms. The distinction between regional firms and wirehouses has become so blurred as to be nearly meaningless.
"And the old argument that a wirehouse was one that was a fully integrated platform, that wasn't just retail advisory, but it was institutional sales and institutional trading capabilities, along with an investment bank — well, that qualifies RBC and Raymond James right off the bat," Waxelbaum said.
But even if onetime regional firms have become much more national, their geographical locations help explain why many are often able to pay advisors more. Firms that are concentrated in wealth hubs like New York, San Francisco or Miami simply have to pay more for office space and support staff.
Regionals can be more generous with advisor compensation because they tend to avoid such places.
"Are they going to turn into wirehouses? No, because in order to do that they'll have to plant their flag in places where wirehouses compete most aggressively," Waxelbaum said. "And if they do that, they'll be less capable of making that payout than they were before."
It's not only at the low end of the revenue-production scale that many so-called regional firms continue to pay more. Notably, none of the wirehouses — UBS, Morgan Stanley, Merrill and Wells Fargo — offer the highest compensation to advisors who generate $2 million a year in revenue. The top payer is instead Edward Jones, which provides $2 million producers with nearly $1.2 million annually ($787,500 in base pay and an average of $397,800 in variable year-end bonuses).
Hard on Edward Jones' heels are Raymond James ($1.115 million), Janney ($1.08 million), Stifel ($1.075 million) and RBC ($1.07 million.) All of these regional firms, at the $2 million production level, exceed the top-paying wirehouse, Wells Fargo, which offers just over $1.033 million.
The differences most likely come down to geography, Waxelbaum said.
"The two largest costs that any firm has on a local basis are real estate and employees," Waxelbaum said. "Not the advisors, but salaried employees. It's wildly more profitable to plant a flag, if you can, in a suburban or even a semi-rural area."
Beyond base compensation: Advisor incentives
Rather than compete to have the highest base payouts, traditional wirehouses tend to use bonuses and similar nudges to encourage advisors to adopt certain behaviors and pursue certain types of clients, said Jason Diamond, the president of the recruiting firm Diamond Consultants.
Merrill, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wells Fargo all added incentives this year to reward advisors for introducing investors to steer investors into loans, certificates of deposit and other banking products and services.
Merrill and Morgan Stanley also modified the compensation they offer advisors for working with "small households." Merrill now pays advisors only
Such policies are aimed at driving advisors toward working with wealthier clients and amassing larger assets-under-management totals.
"They can't just go out and say, 'We don't want any low-end producers,'" Diamond said. "But by saying, 'We're going to give low-end producers basically a demotion, a decrease, and we're going to raise bigger advisors' compensation,' that's the comment they're making."
Why most firms made no comp grid changes at all
In general, though, firms view altering base compensation as one of the easiest ways to drive away advisors. UBS' struggles with advisor departures — the firm has seen the headcount for its Americas unit fall
"The best thing that an advisor hopes for when a firm puts out their annual comp plan is no change, or minor changes that affect another population and not me," Diamond said. "That's because advisors know that when firms tweak compensation, it is almost never to the advisors benefit."
As much as firms want to avoid upsetting advisors, there's likely another reason they tend to make few compensation adjustments, Tasnady said. Most, he said, are reluctant to interfere with business models that, in large part, are doing exactly what they're supposed to.
Those considerations hold true for both wirehouse and regional firms, he said.
"That's the financial factor: Is the profitability meeting the goals of management?" Tasnady said. "If so, why rock the boat if you grew your profits 15% or 20% as a firm? That's what your board expects, and if the stock is doing well, why risk that, while also possibly causing some angst with your advisors by doing a comp change?"
