As the wealth management industry's mega-RIA firms have multiplied through rapid M&A, there's a natural question of whether more of these large, privately held platforms can successfully stage an IPO exit into the public markets.
Look no further than Echelon Partners' 2025 RIA M&A Deal Report, whose authors suggest the reopening of public markets have made IPOs once again a viable option for a growing number of scaled, profitable firms, which would provide validation for valuation expectations across private markets.
"In wealth management, an increasing number of institutional-quality RIAs are now exceeding $10 BN in enterprise value, creating a credible pipeline of firms with the scale, durability, and operating maturity to consider public listings over time," the authors of Echelon's 2025 report offered as part of their 2026 outlook. "For scaled advisory firms with diversified, fee-based revenue, durable margins, and strong governance, public markets are a path to liquidity and growth."
But two veteran RIA founders, including one with direct experience building within a consolidator that went public, say the real question is whether a firm has actually integrated what it's acquired, rather than simply aggregated it.
Ryan Halliday, founder of Crewe Advisors, said firms racing toward $100 billion-plus AUM through acquisition face a fundamental question long before any IPO conversation begins – namely, whether they're building for continued growth in the long run.
"I think the firms that are aggregating but integrating have a real opportunity to really continue to grow and scale," Halliday said in an interview. "It will be interesting to see if those that are just aggregating but aren't integrating the firm [can sustain that growth]."
In Halliday's view, going public isn't structurally harder today for megasize wealth firms aspiring to be the next LPL or Raymond James. The real test, he maintains, is whether they've checked certain boxes of readiness such as integrating their organization, ensuring cultural fit, and building a deep and strong leadership bench.
"The question is, are they building out their infrastructure and leadership infrastructure to be able to handle the geographic spread, the different types of firms, the lift-outs of advisor teams from wirehouses?" he said. "I think it's a challenge to have a consistent client experience at a firm that is aggregating rapidly without intentional integration and leadership across their platform."
Eric Amar, founder and CEO of Accelerated Wealth Partners, spent a decade as chief growth officer at Focus Financial Partners, the RIA aggregator that went public in 2018 before being taken private again by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in 2023.
"On paper, RIAs should make excellent public companies," Amar told InvestmentNews through email comments. "Recurring revenue, low capital intensity, high margins, strong organic growth supported by demographic and market tailwinds, and a large, expanding total addressable market are all qualities public investors typically reward."
Looking back on his time at Focus, he sad the problem investors had wasn't with the underlying business, but the complexity of the structure they were asked to underwrite.
"Focus was the first to bring a decentralized, multi-affiliate model to the public markets, and that structure was harder for investors to underwrite than a single, unified business," he said. "Some of the disclosure around how the model worked could have been clearer, and that made it more difficult for the stock to be understood and valued on its merits."
As Amar argued, a collection of affiliates that hadn't been woven into a single, legible story was a harder sell to public investors than a truly integrated platform would have been – the exact gap Halliday says today's aggregators need to close before trying the same move.
Given that gap in integraton, both executives suggested an IPO shouldn't be treated as the default endgame for PE-backed rollups.
"I don't know if it's always the ideal exit," Halliday said. "It's certainly the quickest way to return liquidity to the LPs of their funds that they're allocating, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way."
He expects more mega RIAs to pursue recapitalizations instead – see MAI Capital Management's March deal giving Carlyle a majority stake as a recent example – through secondary-market sales or a full restructuring of their equity rather than public listings.
"Being a publicly traded company isn't always the right thing for the company," he said. "There's a lot of reasons to stay private."
For Amar, the choice should at least partly come down to the demands of being a public market entity.
"For consolidators considering an IPO, the bigger question may not be whether the underlying business is good, since many RIA platforms clearly are," he said. "It is whether the organization is ready for the scrutiny, disclosure obligations, and quarterly cadence that come with being public."
With private capital still plentiful, Amar added, waiting may be the more rational move for firms that still have work to do on integration.
"With private capital still abundant and willing to underwrite growth using adjusted EBITDA at attractive multiples, many consolidators can reasonably ask whether staying private, and staying focused on building the business rather than managing public market analysts, is the better path for now," he said.
Halliday made the case that consolidators have little reason to rush toward a public listing before they're ready, given how much runway remains in the underlying market. Exhbit A, he says, is the persistent succession pressure across the wealth management sector as a sign that deal flow, and the opportunity to build scale the right way, isn't going anywhere.
"There's still just so many independent RIAs that are going to need to have some type of succession planning as these advisors age out," he said. "I think there's still going to be tremendous opportunity and movement in our industry for the foreseeable future."
For advisors looking to break away into the RIA space, he suggests a smaller, still-organic platform may be a better landing spot then the mega-RIA space.
"If you're looking to continue to build and grow and own something, I don't think the mega RIA space is the place to be," he said. "I would look for a firm that's a $1 billion to $4 billion RIA that sees the world the same way you do and is growing in a way that you want to grow.
"The alternative is you join the mega RIA primarily for a check – which is fine," he added. "But for me, it's more of an exit strategy for somebody versus a growth strategy for an advisor."
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