Robinhood begins RIA referral rollout to 5,000 client prospects

The Robinhood Advisor Network client referral program for RIAs will roll out to 5,000 Robinhood users next week, executives confirmed at the company’s Synergy26 conference in Washington D.C.

“We're rolling out to 5,000 customers next week, and we'll keep going. At say, 1% of 27 million is 270,000, that's a lot of customers. We'll get there, but we're gonna roll it out slowly and make sure that it's absolutely right,” said TradePMR founder Robb Baldwin, whose custodian services firm was acquired by Robinhood in 2024.

Robinhood’s popular app for Gen Z and Millennial investors totals about 27 million funded accounts. The in-app Robinhood Advisor Network lets client prospects watch introductory videos of advisors before selecting which RIA they want to move forward with. Eligible clients prospects have at least $250,000 in investable assets.

“A Robinhood customer today is 36, their financial lives are in those situations where they're just experiencing critical moments of buying a home, having a baby, and some of those experiences haven't even happened yet,” said Baldwin. “These people are self-directed today because they haven't had a need for financial advising, but I believe they will.”

Among the advisors participating in Robinhood Advisor Network (RAN) is Molly Grimes Welch of Grimes & Company, a Massachusetts-based RIA with around $6.5 billion in assets under management, which is backed by Joe Duran’s minority investment firm Rise Growth Partners. The Mather Group, a $17 billion Chicago-based RIA, is also a confirmed RAN participant. 

“When we ask our customers, we have very good communication with them, why do you only have 30% of your wallet with us? They tell us, well, you don't have a solution for me,” said Robinhood Markets chief brokerage officer Steve Quirk. “So this is an amazing opportunity, and it's just going to grow because they're in the wealth accumulation stage.”

Robinhood Advisor Network is exclusively available to RIAs that custody with TradePMR, and RIAs need a minimum of $500 million assets under management to participate. Robinhood takes a 25% fee on the gross revenue an advisor generates from clients referred via Robinhood Advisor Network, which is debuting as Goldman Sachs also rolls out its new referral program with mega-RIAs Creative Planning, Wealth Enhancement, and Mercer as initial members.

“We've watched firms for the last 15, 20 years grow from nothing to extraordinarily large, some firms that we never would have thought would get this big, and they all got this big off of referral programs,” said Baldwin on Wednesday. “I believe we'll have one of the largest referral programs in the history of advisors.”