RIAs bringing in new money, study finds

Registered investment advisers will continue to increase their market share of managed assets in the United States, according to Cerulli Associates Inc. The consulting and research firm released its State of the RIA Marketplace 2012 study last week and projected that the RIA channel will account for 24.7% of assets in the wealth management market by the end of next year. The share of RIAs and dually registered advisers was 20.1% at the end of 2011, the last year for which Cerulli has complete data. “The growth of the RIA and dually registered channels is likely to continue to accelerate due to adviser movement and client choice,” said Tyler Cloherty, associate director at Cerulli. The movement of advisers to the RIA channel has been well-documented. But the study did offer up a notable surprise: RIAs are actually getting more of their growth from new and existing clients than they are from new advisers' becoming RIAs. In 2011, $118 billion of the $232 billion increase in assets in the RIA industry resulted from new and existing clients' contributing more money, while $90 billion resulted from advisers' becoming RIAs. The markets accounted for $23 billion in growth. “The organic growth has been a bigger driver than adviser movement,” Mr. Cloherty said. “RIAs are getting a lot of new clients and a lot of new money from existing clients.”

Diversifying relationships

Mr. Cloherty attributes much of the growth in the RIA channel to the desire of wealthy investors to diversify their relationships with advisers since the financial crisis. The average number of advisers for nearly 8,000 households surveyed for the report rose to 1.2 advisers, from 0.7, not including 401(k) pro¬viders, between 2008 and 2012. For households with more than $5 million in investible assets, the number of adviser relationships rose to 2.3, from 1.4. The trauma of the financial crisis led to a lack of trust in investors' existing advisers, and that led to multiple advisers competing for investors' assets, Mr. Cloherty said. Wirehouse advisers have been hurt the most by that trend, and RIAs have been the biggest beneficiaries, he said. Mr. Cloherty expects, however, that the trend may now be peaking and that investors will look to consolidate their business with fewer advisers over the next several years. “The initial separation of assets benefited indie brokers and RIAs,” Mr. Cloherty said. “But it's too early to tell who benefits from the consolidation.”