August 2026 Breakaway Advisors: Where Talent Went Independent
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Eleven advisors left Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, UBS, or Wells Fargo in August 2026 and joined an independent RIA, a move the industry calls going breakaway. This report breaks down who actually went independent, which firm picked up the most talent, and which wirehouse felt it the hardest. For the broader recruiting picture across the industry, see our most recently published Advisor Moves report.
Merrill Lynch Lost More Advisors to Independence Than Other Wirehouses
Merrill Lynch lost 4 advisors to independent RIAs in August, narrowly ahead of Morgan Stanley's 3. Wells Fargo and UBS each lost 2. Unlike July, when Wells Fargo's total was driven by a single team lift-out, Merrill Lynch's four departures went to four different firms: Fisher Investments, Capital Investment Advisors, Savvy, and OneDigital, pointing to broad attrition rather than one coordinated exit. It's consistent with the broader wirehouse-to-RIA migration patterns we track in our U.S. Wealth Advisor Movement Report, which looks at advisor switching trends across the industry from 2021 through 2025.
No Single Firm Dominated in August
Of the 11 verified breakaways, no destination firm picked up more than one advisor. That's a contrast to July, when a single team lift-out to &Partners accounted for nearly half the month's moves. August's advisors landed at eleven different independent firms, from aggregators like OneDigital and Savvy to boutique RIAs like Heirloom Wealth Management and RCA Wealth Strategies, a pattern of individual advisor decisions rather than coordinated team departures.
The Full List of August 2026 Breakaway Advisors
About AdvizorPro
AdvizorPro is the advisor intelligence platform built for asset managers, ETF issuers, wealthtechs, and distribution teams that need to identify, prioritize, and engage financial advisors. With verified data across 750,000+ RIAs, family offices, and broker-dealers - combined with AI-powered lead scoring, TrafficIQ visitor intelligence, native CRM integrations, and now direct connectivity to Claude and ChatGPT - AdvizorPro powers the go-to-market strategies of leading firms across the wealth management ecosystem.
Cole Cummings is the Director of Marketing at AdvizorPro and a B2B SaaS marketer with multiple years of experience in the fintech industry. He leads all of AdvizorPro’s data-driven research and industry reports, giving him deep expertise in the RIA ecosystem and the trends shaping advisor behavior, allocation decisions, and firm growth across wealth management.
