RIA M&A runs as much as 5x reported totals, Steward Partners CEO says
Steward executives say small succession offers and guide buyouts go unreported, tilting RIA valuation knowledge towards huge corporations
RIA M&A deal exercise is operating at three to 5 occasions the amount that {industry} trackers report, in response to Steward Partners CEO Jim Gold, who describes an “underground” market led by advisor-to-advisor gross sales and inner succession strikes.
Investment financial institution DeVoe & Company tallied a record-setting 322 RIA offers in 2025 and 244 by September 2026, barely forward of that tempo despite the fact that third-quarter deal volume fell 17% year over year. M&A consultancy Echelon Partners tracked 466 RIA M&A offers in 2025.
DeVoe focuses on introduced RIA mergers and acquisitions, whereas Echelon’s broader methodology additionally contains capital infusions, restructurings and breakaway transactions.
“If your transaction will not be straight tied to an asset placement financial institution of some kind, nobody experiences on it,” Gold advised InvestmentInformation. “I feel the quantity might be 300% of what we’re seeing on the market. […] I feel the numbers are actually three, 4, or 5 occasions what’s being reported publicly.”
Off the books
Gold stated his personal agency, a Connecticut-based hybrid RIA with $57 billion in shopper belongings, is a part of the underground M&A market doing offers that don’t get shared publicly.
“You have M&A the place we’re buying advisors at our agency, [who] are coming to us and saying, hey I’ve been right here 10 years, I need to promote my guide to the corporate,” stated Gold. “There’s a ton of peer-to-peer M&A happening. Many of those impartial corporations have a succession group the place they’re mainly enjoying matchmaker and pairing up advisors to purchase one another’s books out, and none of that is reported.”
Jeff Gonyo, Steward’s head of wealth management, stated the agency logged 16 to 17 publicly reported offers over the previous 12 months, alongside roughly a dozen inner transactions that don’t get introduced.
“That motion is occurring continuously, and we’re only a microcosm of that,” Gonyo stated. “Anything underneath that $100 million [AUM] mark will not be getting picked up anyplace. And if you concentrate on the dimensions of the RIA {industry}, nearly all of RIAs stay in that decrease quantity house.”
Skewed valuations
Steward secured $475 million in strategic capital from Ares in December 2025. Joseph Glick, Steward’s chief working officer since July 2026, stated industry-wide valuation benchmarks are additionally skewed by the absence of reporting on smaller offers.
“Deal phrases are solely disclosed to your bigger marquee offers. You will not see these deal phrases being floated round for a few of these smaller offers or succession planning that we’re doing with different corporations,” stated Glick.
The median measurement of acquired RIAs increased from $517 million to $630 million within the first half of this yr in comparison with the primary half of 2025, in response to Fidelity. According to Advisor Growth Strategies’ annual RIA Deal Room Report, the median a number of paid for RIA corporations reached 11.6x EBITDA in 2025, the very best degree the {industry} has recorded.
“Some of the deal phrases that we’re seeing banded round by way of valuation multiples and issues of that nature, it is largely for larger corporations which might be being acquired by scaled acquirers,” Glick added. “Some of the deal phrases that we’re seeing, I’d say aren’t essentially consultant of the whole market.”
