Aggregation platforms make it easy for clients to compare advisors. You are now one option among many.
What’s happening
Platforms like Pontera, Orion, and Addepar give clients a single view across all their financial accounts — regardless of which advisor manages them. When clients can see every fee, every return, and every allocation side by side, the comparison shopping begins. The advisor who cannot articulate their specific value beyond 'we manage your portfolio' becomes the one who gets consolidated out.
RIA M&A hit a record 322 deals in 2025, shattering the prior record of 272 in 2024. Private equity drove 88% of acquisitions. Fidelity counted $796 billion in AUM transacted. Acquirers are buying for AUM, not advisory relationships. When a larger firm acquires a smaller one, the first thing they evaluate is which client relationships can be served more efficiently — and which advisors are redundant. The industry is consolidating from the top and the bottom simultaneously.
The clients most likely to consolidate are the ones advisory firms value most: high-net-worth individuals with multiple advisors. When a client working with three advisors realizes they can get a unified view and potentially better pricing by consolidating to one, the advisor without a differentiated offering is the first to go.
Why the obvious responses don’t work
“Deepen the relationship”
Relationships are necessary but not sufficient. Every advisor claims a deep relationship. When the client sees identical portfolio management from three advisors at three different price points, the relationship does not justify the premium. The offering does.
“Offer more products”
More products is not more value. Adding insurance, lending, and estate referrals makes you a one-stop shop, but it does not make you indispensable. The aggregation platforms are built to compare one-stop shops against each other.
“Match the platform pricing”
You cannot match platform economics with a human-delivered model. Platforms amortize technology costs across millions of accounts. You amortize advisor costs across hundreds. The unit economics will never converge.
What’s working instead
The advisors who survive consolidation own a niche the client cannot get elsewhere. Business owner liquidity events. Executive compensation optimization. Multi-generational wealth transitions. No platform offers these. They require knowing the client, their business, their family, and their tax situation. Specialists do not get consolidated.
The pattern is the same across every firm that gets this right: they stop optimizing the old model and build new offerings around what AI cannot do. The Workshop is the facilitated day we do this work with you. You leave with 2–3 offering briefs, specified and priced. Your team tests them with named clients, then builds what earns it.
Other pressures on Financial Advisory Firms
Fee Compression
AUM-based fees are under pressure as robo-advisors and direct indexing platforms deliver portfolio management at a fraction of the cost.
Planning Commoditization
AI planning tools give clients 80% of basic financial planning at no cost, compressing the value of your planning engagement.
Related reading
Sequoia Just Put a Trillion-Dollar Bounty on Your Business
Sequoia Capital told its portfolio companies that the next trillion-dollar company won’t sell software. It will sell the work professional services firms do now.
What Your Clients Are Saying About AI — When You’re Not in the Room
Your clients have opinions about your firm’s AI capability. They’re sharing those opinions with everyone except you.
$15,000
A full day with your senior team, then 2–3 offering briefs. Test what clients will pay for before you build.
Book a conversation30 minutes with Shawn Yeager. No pitch.