ARC NEWSLETTER
Cerulli Connections
We are pleased to provide financial advisors with our perspective on pivotal themes surfacing through our Advisor Research Collaborative (ARC) with our Cerulli Connections newsletter. This quarter, we’re sharing top trends for advisors to watch as they build out their strategic priorities for 2026. Join ARC to contribute to this body of research and read on for our special coverage below.
1Q 2026
Advisor Top Trends for 2026
01 | Advisors Still Want Independence
The advisory landscape is rapidly shifting as mergers and acquisitions reshape legacy firms and spawn new ones seemingly overnight. Large industry players have favored inorganic growth as a key strategy for years, and fees continue to be compressed as more practices than ever have access to the benefits of scale. In this world of fast-paced aggregation, growth attributable to market performance is often mistaken as analogous to practice health, and even practices with net negative client growth can appear to be doing well. Seasons of market uncertainty are a reminder that in the long term, successful practices are those that focus on functioning well as a business and creating a steady inflow of new clients and new assets. Advisory practices that value business development should not let good market growth pull their attention away from the importance of active organic growth, creating strategic alliances, and intentional staffing decisions.
02 | UHNW Growth Shifts Service Models
Assets under management from ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients across all Cerulli-defined intermediaries have grown at an average annual rate of 12.3% in the last five years. UHNW households, which make up just 0.4% of the population, combine to control more than $22 trillion in investable assets, or approximately one-quarter of all wealth held in the United States. With this upward concentration of wealth in the U.S. market, wealth managers have substantially adapted their service, product, and pricing models to be able to substantively field competitive offerings to this demographic.
03 | Reemergence of Active Investing/Active ETFs
In comparison to passive and strategic beta exchange-traded funds (ETFs), active ETFs have experienced a significantly higher five-year compound annual growth rate (56.5%) since 2020. This level of growth is expected to continue, as Cerulli projects that active ETF assets will increase from $1.4 trillion in 2025 to more than $7 trillion in 2030. During the same timeframe, market-cap-weighted index ETF assets are also projected to increase, but not nearly at the same rate (roughly 45%).
04 | The Rise of Product Specialists
As complex investment products, such as illiquid alternatives, become more common, there is a greater need for regular communication between advisors and asset managers to ensure that advisors are properly educated about these products. To meet this demand, asset managers have increased their use of product specialists within their distribution teams. Advisors now often collaborate directly with product specialists to leverage their expertise, rather than engaging solely with their wholesalers.
Subject Matter Experts
Key Contributors
Stephen Caruso
Associate Director
Bio →
Stephen Caruso
Associate Director
As an Associate Director of Wealth Management, Stephen develops critical research on U.S. registered investment advisors (RIAs). His team is responsible for the collection, interpretation, and visualization of financial advisor data and defining emerging themes impacting the industry. He has issued groundbreaking coverage on the rise of merger and acquisition activity and related consolidation industry, the emergence of the RIA consolidator model, the role of private capital, financial advisor succession, and key practice management takeaways.
Stephen also leads Cerulli’s Advisor Research Collaborative (ARC), which consists of the development of strategic engagement activity to maintain and grow Cerulli’s proprietary network financial advisors.
Full biography here.
Andrew Larsen
Research Analyst
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Andrew Larsen
Research Analyst
Andrew is an analyst on the Wealth Management team, providing quantitative analysis for the U.S. Advisor Metrics and U.S. RIA Marketplace annual reports. He primarily supports Cerulli's financial advisor research and data collection processes. He also contributes to The Cerulli Edge series, as well as various consulting engagements related to the financial advisor marketplace.
Full biography here.
Cerulli Advisor Research Collaborative
Looking to learn more?
Cerulli’s Advisor Research Collaborative (ARC) is the largest financial advisor research network in the U.S. For over 30 years, it has served as the foundation for Cerulli’s strategic intelligence on the U.S. wealth management marketplace. More than 2,000 financial advisors regularly participate in the Collaborative to benefit from shared insights.