The RIA M&A market is running hotter than at any point in the industry's history. The first quarter of 2026 set an all-time record with 142 transactions closed — surpassing the prior high of 125 deals set in both Q3 2025 and Q4 2024 — with total transacted AUM reaching $1.67 trillion, a 107% year-over-year increase from the $805 billion recorded in Q1 2025, according to ECHELON Partners' Q1 2026 Quarterly RIA M&A Deal Report. ECHELON projects full-year 2026 deal volume will reach 475 transactions, edging past 2025's record of 466. DeVoe & Company separately reported 93 RIA deals in Q1 2026, up 24% year-over-year, and found that 54% of RIA leaders expect M&A volume to increase further over the next 12 months.
For many advisory firms — particularly those below $1 billion in AUM — the most immediate consequence of that record activity is not a strategic decision. It is a full inbox. InvestmentNews asked four RIA leaders how they are fielding that interest and whether it has changed how they think about building their businesses.
Kyle Fitzgerald, investment director at Ballast Rock, says he regularly receives inbound interest from acquirers but views his firm as too early in its growth trajectory to consider any of those conversations seriously.
His strategic priorities have not shifted. Ballast Rock's growth focus remains on delivering differentiated investment solutions to clients and building a platform that allows advisors to do their best work. The firm is actively hiring and pursuing its own acquisition targets rather than positioning itself as a seller. Where the M&A wave has had a tangible effect, Fitzgerald says, is in the talent market: revenue multiples required to recruit advisors have increased, and more firms are competing for every candidate. His response is to cast the widest recruiting net he ever has while holding firm on cultural fit — a discipline he views as more important for long-term firm cohesion than filling seats quickly.
"Our growth strategy remains unchanged by hot market demand: namely to deliver a differentiated product to our end clients and a strong platform to allow our advisors to do their best work. We are actively hiring and acquiring at this stage. In response to intensifying competition for talent, I am casting the widest recruiting net I ever have while holding a hard line on cultural fit, because the right hire matters more for firm cohesion than the fast one," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald's advice to smaller RIAs evaluating acquisition partners focuses on alignment rather than valuation: confirm the prospective partner's vision, work horizon, and retirement timeline match the firm's own, and scrutinize whether the economics and ownership model genuinely reflect where the advisor wants to take their practice.
Blake Butler, founder and chief executive Officer of Canterbury Capital Wealth Management, says the acquisition overtures have been consistent and increasing. His inbox and phone receive inquiries weekly from firms asking whether Canterbury Capital would consider being acquired. The answer, consistently, is no — but the volume of interest has had an indirect effect on his thinking.
Rather than motivating him to consider selling, the inbound activity has reinforced his interest in being on the buying side of the M&A equation — selectively, and only where the strategic fit is genuinely compelling. His day-to-day focus on building enterprise value has not changed. The firm continues to grow independently, and Butler's approach to building the business — client-first culture, integrated service delivery, long-term relationships — has not been altered by the acquisition market's pace.
"It feels like every week we receive emails or phone calls from firms asking whether we'd be interested in being acquired. If anything, it's reinforced our interest in being on the acquisition side, but only if we find the right fit. When you combine firms that share the same client-first philosophy but have complementary strengths, you're able to deliver more value and a broader set of services to clients than either firm could on its own," Butler said.
Butler's framework for evaluating a potential acquisition partner is built around complementarity rather than similarity. Two firms with identical capabilities are redundant; two firms with shared values and different strengths can each become more for clients by combining. The distinction matters for advisors who may be tempted to pursue a transaction with a firm that simply mirrors their own model.
Kathy Capuano, senior vice president and head of advisor recruiting and market growth at Janney Montgomery Scott, offers a perspective that cuts across the pure-RIA narrative that dominates most M&A coverage.
Most of the advisors joining Janney come from the wirehouse channel, but Capuano is also seeing increased interest from successful independent RIA operators who are evaluating long-term partnership opportunities — advisors who have built their businesses but are now asking whether they have the resources, technology, succession planning, and operational infrastructure to support the next stage of growth. The M&A wave, in her view, is not just driving consolidation among existing RIAs — it is driving a broader reassessment by advisors across all channels about whether their current affiliation structure is the right one for the decade ahead.
"As advisory businesses become more complex, advisors are increasingly asking whether they have the resources, technology, succession planning, and operational support needed for the next stage of growth. Long-term partnership, accessible leadership, and a demonstrated commitment to investing in technology, capabilities, and advisor support are just as important as financial terms," Capuano said.
Capuano's advice to advisors evaluating any partnership — including Janney — centers on cultural alignment first: look for a partner whose culture matches your own, who invests in advisor success rather than simply acquiring clients, and whose value proposition enhances rather than disrupts the client experience. Financial terms matter, but they are rarely the deciding factor for advisors who regret a transition.
Isaac Wakszol, Founder, President, and CEO of Activest Wealth Management, says the acquisition interest is real, daily, and consistent. His response has been equally consistent: it has not changed his strategy, because his strategy was never built around valuation.
Activest serves multi-generational families with ties to Latin America and thinks in generational time horizons — a frame that Wakszol argues is fundamentally incompatible with the capital structure of most acquirers, whose private equity backers require exits within a defined window. A partner whose capital needs a return in three to five years is operating on a fundamentally different clock than a family thinking about wealth transfer across two or three generations. That mismatch, in his view, inevitably surfaces in how the acquiring firm treats client relationships and staff after close.
"Protecting that kind of multigenerational relationship takes patience and independence that a scale-first model rarely rewards. Rather than fielding offers to be absorbed, we are focused on the other side of this wave — bringing in like-minded advisors who share our purpose and our values and want a real path to partnership. That is the version of growth that makes us better for clients, not just bigger," Wakszol said.
Wakszol's advice to smaller RIAs fielding acquisition interest is to begin with purpose, not price. If a prospective partner cannot articulate why they do this work beyond growth metrics and revenue multiples, that gap will show up later in how they treat the acquired firm's clients and team. The questions that matter most, he argues, are not about economics: Who owns the client relationship after close? What happens to the people? Will the firm be recognizable in two years?
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