9 Trends That Sum Up the State of RIAs: Cerulli

Despite enormous changes in the U.S. financial services sector over the past few years, the news continues to be mostly positive for registered investment advisors, according to the latest data from research and consulting firm Cerulli Associates. The firm collects and processes more than 1,500 financial advisor survey responses each year, Bing Waldert, managing director of U.S. research at the firm, said Wednesday during a webinar on the state of the U.S. RIA channel. "A great place to start is to look at some of our most recent market sizing numbers," said Marina Shtyrkov, associate director, wealth management at Cerulli. "Every year, we size the financial advice market … including RIAs, and we divide the RIA space into two segments: independent and hybrid" RIA firms, the latter of which have an affiliation with a broker-dealer. And, "when we update this data every year, in a lot of ways, not much changes," she conceded. "We're seeing the RIA channels continue to lead the industry across both of the main metrics that we measure: headcount and asset growth." But she said: "I think that doesn't really tell the whole story." See the gallery above to see nine main trends that sum up the state of the U.S. RIA channel, according to Shtyrkov and Stephen Caruso, research analyst, wealth management at Cerulli.