What’s the biggest RIA in the business? Well, it depends on your definition.
For Financial Planning’s 7th RIA Leaders ranking, the answer came down to three main factors: whether the firms receive commissions, maintain broker-dealer or insurance company affiliations and have client bases that are at least 50% individuals or high-net-worth individuals. To make this list, firms had to be a “no” on the first two points and a “yes” on the third.
In addition, RIAs had to answer “no” to the question on the SEC’s Form ADV asking whether they serve as the adviser or subadviser to an investment company. From there, Financial Planning and compliance consulting firm RIA in a Box compiled a list of the top 15 RIAs based on assets under management, which has some household names that will be familiar to many in the industry.
The group represents a range of firms, from an asset manager with no listed investment adviser representatives to a family office group with 25 IARs, a trust company that has 33 and an RIA aggregator firm with 265. They share in common a focus on fee-only planning for individual clients to the tune of billions of dollars in AUM.
Scroll down to see which firms made the list. For the group of top-ranked firms on the last RIA Leaders list in 2017, follow this link. To see this year’s RIA Leaders cover story, entitled, “High touch, high tech,” click here.
Very important note: Rankings are based on discretionary and nondiscretionary assets under management listed on SEC Form ADV as of May 1, 2020. RIA in a Box gathered the data from the SEC’s public database.