The financial advice industry is navigating a talent inflection point. Retirements are outpacing new entrants. Recruiting wars are playing out firm by firm. Women advisors are staring at a gap between their growing influence over client wealth and their representation in firm leadership. And dealmaking continues to move billions of dollars across the map. Several of the industry's most prominent outlets have been covering these shifts, and AdvizorPro data has been at the center of more than one of those stories. Here is what the latest coverage reveals.

The Advisor Retirement Wave Has Already Begun

In 2025, more than 57,000 financial advisors exited the profession while fewer than 53,000 entered it, according to analysis from AdvizorPro published in Wealth Management. That four-thousand-person deficit was not an anomaly: the industry posted net losses in four of the last five years, with only 2024 managing a slim positive balance that last year's figures swiftly erased.

The demographic picture reinforces the concern. Financial advisors are roughly ten years older on average than professionals in comparable fields, and estimates from McKinsey and the CFP Board project that as many as 40% of practicing advisors could retire by the early-to-mid 2030s. Beyond demographics, the piece points to fee compression and the rapid evolution of AI as additional pressure points for advisors who built careers in a more investment-centric world.

The retirement wave is both a succession planning challenge and a distribution opportunity. AdvizorPro's U.S. Wealth Advisor Movement Report 2026 tracks which platforms are capturing the most advisor transitions year over year and which firms are best positioned to absorb AUM as retirements accelerate.

Women Advisors Face a Plateau, and a Generational Opportunity

Two data points sit in uncomfortable contrast. According to Cerulli Associates, roughly $124 trillion is expected to transfer between generations over the next two decades, and women are projected to control or influence around 75% of those assets. Yet a 2025 report by AdvizorPro found that fewer than a quarter of RIA firms have a female owner or executive.

A recent piece in Financial Planning puts a finer point on the problem: women currently make up about 26% of financial advisors, and that number has largely stalled. Women account for just 20% of advisors within the RIA channel specifically — the industry's fastest-growing segment. The article argues that recruiting alone will not close the gap, pointing to structural barriers like rigid career paths, caregiving responsibilities, and a lack of visible female role models in senior roles.

A separate piece in AdvisorHub brought that tension to life through the stories of women advisors who built careers despite those headwinds, describing a client-relationship style grounded in empathy and holistic planning that many expect to grow in demand as the wealth transfer accelerates. Whether the shift in client wealth drives meaningful change in firm leadership, or simply moves assets without changing who manages them, is a question distribution teams and asset managers should be watching closely.

The Firms That Have Mastered Advisor Retention

Much of the industry conversation focuses on advisor movement, but AdvizorPro recently turned that question around: which firms are holding onto their advisors for the longest? The research, featured in InvestmentNews, breaks down average tenure by firm size across four cohorts.

Among firms with more than 100 employees, Federated Investment Management Company leads with an average tenure of over 28 years. In the 10-to-25 employee range, Fulham & Co. of Wellesley, Massachusetts tops the chart at 35 years. For the smallest firms with five to ten employees, Gifford Fong Associates of Lafayette, California records the highest average in the dataset at more than 38 years. For context, consulting firm Kehrer Group puts average wirehouse tenure at 12 years and seven months, and independent broker-dealer tenure at 11 years and eight months.

"While advisor firm M&A is very often highlighted and there are a lot of advisors switching firms, there are also several firms that should be commended for having advisors remain at their firm for several years or even decades on average," an AdvizorPro spokesperson told InvestmentNews. You can explore how tenure and stability patterns vary by channel in AdvizorPro's Advisor Channel Migration Trends analysis.

The Recruiting Wars: Kestra, LPL, and the Fight Over Commonwealth Advisors

The most competitive recruiting story in wealth management right now centers on the roughly 3,000 financial advisors who were part of Commonwealth Financial Network when LPL Financial announced its $2.7 billion acquisition. A January 2026 report from AdvizorPro and Muriel Consulting found that 653 advisors had already left Commonwealth since the deal was announced, with Kestra Financial emerging as one of the primary destinations after recruiting close to 130 Commonwealth advisors in 2025 alone.

As InvestmentNews reported, Kestra has since been investing in its own recruiting infrastructure, hiring business development consultants directly from inside LPL across multiple markets. The context matters: the average Commonwealth advisor generated approximately $1 million in annual revenues, making this one of the highest-value advisor populations in the independent channel. AdvizorPro's monthly Advisor Moves reports track firm-level inflows and outflows, making it possible to follow where the Commonwealth diaspora continues to land.

M&A and Advisor Movement Continue to Reshape the Competitive Map

A recent Wealth Management roundup captured several notable recent transactions, with AdvizorPro data providing the context on advisor attrition. The biggest move: KBK Wealth Management, a six-advisor team managing $1.3 billion from Commonwealth, opted for Wells Fargo's independent broker/dealer arm FiNet. According to AdvizorPro and Muriel Consulting data cited in the article, Commonwealth advisor attrition peaked in September 2025 and declined through December, suggesting the most acute phase of disruption may be stabilizing.

On the RIA side, Credent Wealth Management completed its first acquisition since taking on external capital, picking up two firms for a combined $250 million. Rothschild Wealth Partners continued expanding in Chicago, Apollon Wealth acquired Sage Advisors in Indianapolis, and a Kestra-affiliated team joined Bluespring partner U.S. Financial Services. These deals reflect the sustained role of private equity in accelerating consolidation, a dynamic explored in AdvizorPro's Private Equity Ownership in the RIA Space – 2025 Trends.

These five stories are connected signals from the same underlying shift: a profession working out who leads it, who stays, who moves, and who eventually inherits the client relationships that define it. For a comprehensive view of how those transitions are playing out across channels and geographies, the AdvizorPro U.S. Wealth Advisor Movement Report 2026 is the most detailed resource available on the current state of advisor mobility.

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.

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