Over the past decade, RIAs have grown faster than any other type of wealth management firm. Yet because more than 5,000 of them compete in the wealth management marketplace, it can be challenging to understand the different business models they employ and how these affect firms' ability to participate in different segments of the wealth market. In a new report, Aite-Novarica Group evaluates the RIA market by business model and size. Researchers analyzed RIAs' annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for calendar years 2019 and 2020, as found in the SEC's Form ADV database. They used cluster-analysis techniques to classify the firms filing into seven different firm types, and then focused the analysis on two types of independent RIAs — fee-only and hybrid. In addition, they tapped the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances to fill in missing data about the retail market and to develop market-sizing estimates for U.S. high-net-worth and non-high-net-worth households.
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