This Week in Wealth

In an episode recorded on the conference floor at Schwab Impact, Dynasty Financial Partners CEO Shirl Penney joins This Week in Wealth to discuss the state of the RIA custody market, where the next big breakaways are coming from, and what will separate winning and losing firms in an era of uncertain markets and higher rates.

Ahead of next week’s Impact conference, This Week in Wealth runs the rule over Charles Schwab, which has had a busy seven days. In that span, it has started charging ETFs distribution fees and reported 55% growth in its own wealth management business, while still cementing its position as the largest RIA custodian in the game. The team unpacks it all.
Plus, Ian shares his scoop on mega-RIA Beacon Pointe’s finances, including the $74bn shop’s profit margin, organic growth rate and leverage level.

Roughly 50% of Mercer Global Advisors’ net new client assets in the first two quarters of 2026 came from Charles Schwab’s and Fidelity’s custodial referral networks, according to investor materials viewed by Citywire.

This Week in Wealth discusses how this statistic tallies with a previous claim by the firm’s CEO that custodial referrals are its third-largest source of leads, and explores various data in the materials, including the mega-RIA’s organic growth rate, profit margin, employee ownership and leverage levels.

The team also looks at Focus Financial Partners’ plans to once again make large external deals following a period of internal consolidation. Plus, there’s a bit about baseball.

Fidelity has raised its custodial minimum to $100m, giving RIAs until June 30, 2027, to meet that new requirement or face removal from the platform. It's a move with wider ramifications for hundreds of RIAs, rival custodians, and one that might redefine what it means to be a small wealth manager. This Week in Wealth unpacks it all.
The team also shares its biggest takeaways from its week in Austin, Texas, hosting CEOs and CIOs from some of the fastest-growing and most notable RIAs in America. Oh, and Ian is back from safari. Happy Friday!

This bonus episode of This Week in Wealth features a fireside chat with Karl Heckenberg, founder and managing partner of Constellation Wealth Capital.

Since its launch in 2023, Constellation has invested in 18 RIAs, which have a combined $340bn in assets.

At last week’s Citywire CIO Summit in Austin, Texas, Karl told Andrew Foerch about the rapidly changing RIA M&A landscape. They discussed why larger platforms are struggling to attract their desired multiples, how public markets value wealth managers, and the green flags Karl looks for when striking a deal.

We’ll be back again for a regular episode of This Week in Wealth on Friday.

Dakota Wealth Management founder and CEO Peter Raimondi joins This Week in Wealth to discuss whether RIAs are well-prepared for a prolonged market downturn.

He shares how he weathered the Great Financial Crisis, current client portfolio positioning, and his concerns about wealth managers’ leverage levels today.

This episode was recorded on the sidelines of Citywire’s inaugural CEO Summit in Austin, Texas. You can check out some highlights from the conference at https://citywire.com/ria/tag/ceo-summit citywire.com

This Week in Wealth breaks down the C-suite shuffle at Merit Financial Advisors, a $32bn Georgia-based RIA that has become one of the most acquisitive firms in the market.

At the end of a year in which the firm will have completed 15 deals, Merit’s founder and chief executive Rick Kent will move to be executive chairman, with current president Kay Lynn Mayhue becoming chief executive. Alongside the executive changes, the firm has also secured fresh investment from minority owner Constellation Wealth Capital. Alec Rich joins the pod to explain what’s happening and why.

The team also discusses Savvy Wealth’s launch of a custodial infrastructure platform to third-party RIAs and looks ahead to Citywire RIA’s inaugural CEO Summit in Austin next week.

Ian dials in from the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach, California, to give the lowdown on Anthropic’s Claude for Financial Advisors suite and dig into the AI firm’s tie-up with custodian Charles Schwab.
Alex and Ian also discuss Creative Planning’s acquisition of RVK Inc., an institutional investment consultancy overseeing roughly $4.3tn in client assets, and the strategic rationale for the deal.

Ian and Alex fire up the transatlantic telegraph cable to break down Envestnet’s deal for Vestmark (news that Citywire RIA readers saw before anyone else). They also discuss New York City-based RIA Savvy Wealth raising $100m via a Series C funding round and Schwab Wealth Advisory hiking fees for certain clients.

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is creating a menu of wealth managers to service its employees following its initial public offering later this year, which could be a huge boon to any RIA that makes the list.
Ian unpacks his scoop, explaining what Anthropic has asked of wealth managers and how the firm’s approach differs from the one taken by a group of SpaceX employees earlier this year.
Andrew also joins the pod to discuss Bain’s plans to reinvest in mega-RIA Carson Group, extending a bet it first made in 2021, and the team squeezes in a section on Schwab hiking new client minimums for long-short SMAs to $10m.
It really has been a summer of scoops!

Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown joins Ian and Alex to discuss his take that the ‘steroid era’ is over for advisors. He argues advisors who have based their growth on rankings, low rates, and referrals (from custodians) are in for a rude awakening.
This episode was recorded minutes after it was announced that Vanguard had agreed to acquire RIA custodian Altruist. As a client of and shareholder in Altruist, Brown also gives his insights on the deal and what it might mean for the wealth management industry.

For the second time in a year, Charles Schwab is more than doubling the AUM threshold at which it will refer brokerage clients to RIAs in its lucrative Schwab Advisor Network. Ian Wenik and Alex Steger are joined by a scoop of reporters to unpack one of the biggest wealth management stories of the year.

The team also dives back into Citywire's 2026 50 Growers report to explore some of the smaller firms to make the list, as well as those powering ahead without the help of outside capital.

Alex Steger, Ian Wenik and Andrew Foerch take a deep dive into Citywire’s annual 50 Growers Across America report. The trio discuss how they identified the fastest-growing RIAs in each state, and explore some specific firms' growth strategies, which range from VIP fishing trips to reeling in clients via LLMs. To read the report in full, click here.

No summer slowdown here! First up, Franklin Templeton is in talks over a deal for AlTi Global, a publicly listed $90bn wealth manager that has been looking for a buyer for about a year now.
Ian, Sam and Alex break down the story, discussing why Franklin is keen to expand its wealth business and why AlTi wants to return to private hands, having endured a tricky time on the public markets.
But that’s not all! The team also gets into the weeds of the settlement between Edelman Financial Engines and Prime Capital, which brought an end to a months-long legal saga over advisor hiring and client solicitation. They explore which firm won and what it might mean for the wider industry.

Ian, Andrew and Sam break down Citywire's latest scoop about long-short separately managed accounts, which have become one of the most popular new investing tools in the wealth management industry. Sam explains how he obtained documents which show how various RIA custodians assess and treat AQR's long-short strategies, plus the team discusses a pair of new major M&A processes getting underway.

Ian, Andrew and Sam analyze the recent round of layoffs to hit Commonwealth Financial Network's home office. Who was hit hardest and what do the cuts say about the state of its acquisition by LPL Financial? Plus, with Alex out, the trio discusses Charles Schwab's in-house wealth business and how it's bumping up against RIAs and LPL's deal to buy one of its largest affiliates ... and maybe a certain hit movie, too.

Three years after buying Focus Financial Partners, PE shop Clayton, Dubilier & Rice is pursuing a sale of a minority stake in the RIA financier. Ian, Andrew, Sam and Alex recap how we got here and explore who a prospective buyer could be.

The team also discusses Corient's update to a Form ADV after the $500bn RIA erroneously told regulators it was offering its advisors incentives to allocate client assets to alternative investments.

And they have the skinny on a class action lawsuit against Betterment alleging that the robo-advisor offered a cash sweep program that breached its fiduciary obligations to clients.

Ian, Andrew and Alex discuss the idea of a custodian taking minority stakes in RIAs. The same idea was discussed, at least at a conceptual level, by Fidelity in 2025, as Citywire exclusively reported. The team digs into the logic of such a move as well as the obvious conflicts it could create.
They also run the rule over two high-profile exits from broker-dealer Osaic, look at Goldman Sachs’ decision to get in the long-short SMA game, and check in on their World Cup predictions.

Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor joins This Week in Wealth for a special episode, recorded live at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago on June 17.
Ian, Alex, and Kunal discuss Morningstar’s relationship with RIAs, what the march of AI might mean for advisors (and their fees), how the research firm is approaching private markets (both analytically and commercially), and—most importantly—who will win the World Cup.

Ian and Andrew host James Poer, the chief executive of $170bn Kestra Holdings, for an extended discussion on why his firm chose to have another go-round with its original private equity owner, the lessons he learned from the 2008 financial crisis and why you shouldn't expect to see him at the helm of a public company anytime soon.