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Simply making money over the course of 2025 wasn’t the challenge. The S&P 500 rose 16 percent, capping the best three-year return since the dotcom boom, while the Nasdaq Composite did even better with an annual return of 20 percent. It was a similar story across the other indexes. Handling the volatility was the true test.
Against this backdrop, InvestmentNews’ Top Financial Professionals 2026 proved themselves to be proactive. While clients wanted to see their assets growing, they wanted it done with sophistication, understanding, and foresight.
The 100 winning financial professionals were evaluated and ranked by weighted calculations of:
50 percent – total 2025 AUM
25 percent – AUM growth over the evaluation period
25 percent – client growth over the evaluation period
Growing AUM has been impacted by the biggest RIAs and scalable platforms capturing a disproportionate share of new assets, mainly through consolidation, alternatives, and technology-enabled operating models.
In addition, the economies of scale offered by tech frees professionals and advisors’ time for business development and operational targets, while these broader capabilities also attract more high-net-worth clients. And there’s been greater integration of active ETFs, with McKinsey estimating in a 2025 report that “around half of active ETF flows represent substitution from legacy vehicles – primarily mutual funds – while the remaining is driven by new demand for active strategies, sometimes at the expense of passive allocations” that “around half of active ETF flows represent substitution from legacy vehicles – primarily mutual funds – while the remaining is driven by new demand for active strategies, sometimes at the expense of passive allocations”.
This is something Andrew Blake, associate director of wealth management at Cerulli Associates, pinpoints.
“Top advisors especially have really taken steps to educate themselves about alternative products that behave differently from traditional equity or fixed income products,” he says. “Those using certain alternative products may highlight their steady performance, particularly during broader market volatility.”
And with all indexes on growth trends, many see valuations as elevated and markets as late in the cycle, which the best advisors are alert to.
“In this type of market, discipline, risk management, and thoughtful portfolio construction matter far more than blind participation because protecting capital is often the difference between a plan that works and one that doesn’t,” says Terri McGray, president of Longevity Capital Management LLC.
Jerry Davidse, one of IN’s Top Financial Professionals 2026, illustrates an investment approach built around disciplined planning, downside preparation, and long-term family wealth.
Presilium Private Wealth’s CEO explains that in a highly volatile year, “we did a great job managing that volatility by having a plan in place for our clients ahead of time,” which allowed the firm to be “well prepared to buy stocks during that decline” in the April 2025 tariff-driven selloff rather than react emotionally.
This discipline is anchored in Presilium’s Investment Policy Statement, meaning portfolio shifts are rules-based rather than ad hoc, which drives rebalancing and a holistic philosophy that Davidse emphasizes is “really not just about their investments [but] about a holistic, long-term financial plan” spanning tax, estate, gifting, and multigenerational wealth transfer.
Another winner, Scott Van Den Berg, president of Century Management, has boosted AUM. Roughly 15 percent was driven by net new deposits, both from new client relationships and existing clients adding capital, and the remaining 85 percent was attributable to portfolio appreciation.
That performance was not the result of any single position or narrow sector bet. Rather, it reflected broad participation across portfolios, sectors, and individual holdings, with multiple strategies performing well and most exceeding their respective benchmarks.
“We manage portfolios that range from fully invested, more aggressive equity strategies, to moderate and moderately aggressive balanced allocations, to conservative, 100-percent fixed income portfolios – and all of these approaches contributed meaningfully during the year,” he says.
In 2025, gold was the firm’s strongest single contributor and typically represented 6–10 percent of client portfolios. Beyond that, performance contributions were well diversified across sectors including communications, technology, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and energy.
Van Den Berg adds, “The breadth of participation was a key strength – it was not a concentrated or narrow market experience for our clients.”
The goal is not to forecast short-term market moves, but to understand what is being paid for a stream of future cash flows and whether that price provides an appropriate margin of safety. Importantly, Van Den Berg’s definition of value incorporates both upside potential and downside risk.
He structures client money in different “buckets,” so volatility in stocks doesn’t derail near-term goals. Short-term money (next six months to two years) is invested conservatively, while longer-term money (five to 15 years) is invested for growth, “irrespective of the fluctuation”. This ensures that clients are “never in a position to have to sell stocks when they’re temporarily down in a material way to support their living needs or whatever their liquidity event is”.
Trevor Scotto, another of IN’s Top Financial Professionals 2026, has won the respect of clients with his ensemble model, a highly integrated tax and planning framework that he executes calmly and proactively especially in volatile markets. Business owners, successful retirees and tech professionals with significant stock concentrations are the groups his skills appeal to.
“We typically run tax projections. We might do that a couple of times a year, and that helps us identify if there are savings or strategies that might make sense. And then, on top of that, we do their tax returns,” he says.
Scotto explicitly distinguishes between generic tax planning and true, actionable tax advice that clients can implement immediately, while avoiding big tactical bets based on news events, and instead applies a disciplined playbook in drawdowns and volatility.
When investment changes occur based on world events, Scotto, one of the co-founding partners at Fiduciary Financial Group, turns to Roth conversion planning. This integrated approach turns the firm’s tax planning team into a key differentiator as clients see the immediate value of a portfolio managed with real-time understanding of their tax liability.
“We look at tax-loss harvesting and rebalancing, buying bonds or selling bonds and buying stocks at a discount. And if there’s excess cash, we put that to work in a down market,” he explains. “If we can do a tax redirection and we do a Roth conversion, the client can accurately see the full picture before making an informed decision.”
The psychological aspect of a volatile 2025 was key for Thomas Ruggie, CEO of Destiny Wealth Partners.
He says, “I’m not as worried about volatility itself. I’m worried about the psychology of volatility for our clients. Our strategy does a fantastic job of managing that.”
The aim is to prevent emotional decisions at the worst possible times.
He adds, “The goal is for our clients not to make irrational decisions at the two times people most often do: when things are going very well… and when things are going very poorly.”
For his core wealth management clients ($1–$5 million), Ruggie typically steers them into public securities, public equities in that pool, with some alternative investments mixed in.
The key differentiator is his firm’s proprietary alternative fund that holds investments at qualified purchaser (QP) level as the underlying investments – hedge funds, private equity firms, and even direct investments that are only available to QPs.
“We’re giving our wealth management clients the opportunity to invest the same way higher-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals invest,” says Ruggie.
For HNW and UHNW clients, they are heavy in the alternative investment world, and specifically on mid- to late-stage pre-IPO direct investments into private companies such as SpaceX, Anthropic, xAI, Databricks, Stripe, Anduril, Agility Robotics, and Crusoe. Ruggie emphasizes this as a major differentiator for clients.
“Those are only available to QP clients, but we do include some of those in our accredited alternative investment fund.”
The alternative fund has 60 percent in hedge funds, and 40 percent in private equity and direct investments. Over the last year, the firm’s publicly traded portfolio almost doubled the S&P 500 and its alternative credit investments outperformed fixed income benchmarks. Offering these services has an impact on AUM.
“We surpassed $1 billion as a firm. To think we’ve gone from $1 billion to now pushing $1.6 billion in just over two years is crazy to me, especially because it’s all organic growth – no mergers or acquisitions,” Ruggie says.
And he acknowledges that they are not aggressive marketers, implying the growth is largely client driven. One standout referral was for a nine-figure prospect, not in a rush to move her accounts, but continued contact on direct investment offerings stimulated interest and ultimately resulted in movement of the accounts.
“I know I’m biased, but our firm is a great firm, and we’re not the best in the world at promoting ourselves or generating new business through deliberate marketing. Yet, because we are as good as we are, we still get a lot of business without really having to ask for it,” Ruggie explains.
Clients are attracted by advisors and professionals who can offer a suite of services, and this is where firms can win more business.
Blake of Cerulli Associates says, “It’s really crucial that top advisors at least have a solution they can recommend for the comprehensive financial picture regardless of whether they offer it in-house or through a partnership with someone else.”
This is evident across the spectrum of IN’s Top Financial Professionals 2026. Ruggie points to the relative ease of investment management today and emphasizes that doing other things to support the client’s overall needs creates the value or the experience they’re looking for.
“If you give me a $2 million, $10 million, or $100 million portfolio, how to invest and manage that, set expectations, and build a plan – I can do that in my sleep. It’s everything else that really makes the difference,” he says.
Ruggie’s services extend to philanthropy, tax and estate planning, business liquidity event planning, and more. His golden rule is a belief that everyone should spend the majority of their time doing the top three things they really want to be doing.
“For virtually all my clients, their top three does not include managing their investment portfolio or talking to their CPA and attorney,” he says. “If I can take all that off their plate, they have more time to focus on what truly matters to them. That’s where we create a lot of value.”
Talking about the investment-only model for advisors and professionals, Scotto describes it as “dying out quickly”.
For his clients, who are mostly based in California, one of the firm’s partners is an estate attorney affording the ability to offer in-house advice. The focus is on ensuring Scotto understands clients’ financial situation inside and out, and then learning more about their goals, concerns, and what they want to accomplish.
“It honestly just comes down to asking the right questions and really having a genuine interest in the clients,” he says.
Fellow winner Davidse is determined not to create a “transactional” dynamic, hence opting to become a fee-only RIA. He publishes weekly videos and white papers to keep clients updated, along with using YouTube to educate and attract potential clients.
“We do quarterly meetings with each client where we’ll go through their financial plan, go through the performance of their accounts, and then talk about things that are more specific to them,” he explains.
Van Den Berg ties comprehensive planning to life stages. For younger clients, he recommends a five-to-seven-year plan focused on getting “directionally correct” on debt, housing, family and basic savings, rather than fixating on retirement 40 years away. He then highlights a second major checkpoint “five years before retirement” to stress test for premature death, long-term-care needs, layoffs, and other shocks in the clients' peak earning years.
In retirement, he recommends continued reviews to ensure clients can fund bucket-list goals before their health and energy decline, noting that even very healthy clients in their early 80s often have “a little less energy, maybe some cognitive declines,” making it harder to enjoy those plans if they weren’t frontloaded.
Van Den Berg sees his job as knowing when to take “a deeper dive” and matching clients with the right professional, while he integrates their recommendations back into the overall plan.
For potential clients, he encourages them to interview advisors, evaluate experience, and understand the deliverables before committing, again reinforcing transparency as part of his trust building.
On retention, Van Den Berg sees how strong relationships form once it’s clear he understands all the moving parts of a client’s situation. “Whether you have to deliver good news or unfavorable news, as long as you’re straight with people, the returns become a little less important as far as the percentage return, because there’s more value placed on the relationship.”
Advancements in tech have enabled a closer relationship as advisors can model real numbers and scenarios in a way clients understand. This elevates the value to illustrate and interpret complexity and guide long-term strategies. The marketplace now recognizes comprehensive planning as the hallmark of a truly high-performing advisor.
As investors become more informed, many are looking for the same type of clarity they expect from other professional relationships, such as with their physicians or attorneys, where the expectation is that guidance is aligned with their best interest throughout the engagement.
McGray adds, “What’s changing now is that clients are no longer viewing this as a premium service. They want coordination between their investments, retirement income strategy, tax considerations, healthcare planning, and long-term goals. They want their portfolio and their financial plan working in concert, not in isolation.”
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To compile the third annual Top Financial Professionals (previously Top Advisors) list, InvestmentNews opened a public nomination process for eligible financial professionals. Nominations were accepted from advisors, colleagues, industry professionals, and clients. Only professionals who were formally nominated were considered for the 2026 list. All nominee information was required to be reviewed and verified by each professional’s compliance department before it was accepted into the evaluation process.
A total of 394 nominations were received, and 100 professionals were ultimately selected as recipients of the 2026 Top Financial Professionals recognition.
Professionals were evaluated solely on quantifiable business metrics covering the period from August 2024 through August 2025. The ranking was based on the following weighted calculations:
50% – total 2025 AUM
25% – AUM growth over the evaluation period
25% – client growth over the evaluation period
InvestmentNews assigned each professional a ranking within each of the three categories and then applied the weighting formula above to calculate a combined score. Nominees were placed on the 2026 Top Financial Professionals list based on their final composite ranking.
This recognition is based only on the business metrics listed above: AUM, AUM growth, and client growth.
To comply with SEC advertising and anti-fraud rules, InvestmentNews confirms that the 2026 Top Financial Professionals list is not based on:
investment performance or portfolio returns
client experience, testimonials, or satisfaction
qualitative factors such as leadership, service quality, or professional reputation
any criteria not expressly stated in the methodology
No fees are required to be nominated or considered for this recognition. Some professionals may choose to purchase optional promotional or marketing packages from InvestmentNews after being selected. Such purchases do not influence the methodology, scoring, or selection in any way.
The InvestmentNews Top Financial Professionals report is proudly sponsored by Wealth.com.
