RIA Leaders 2026 list of the 150 largest fee-only RIAs

The 150 largest fee-only financial planning firms manage a combined $1.32 trillion across more than 992,000 client accounts, according to this year’s edition of the RIA Leaders rankings.

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Using the below criteria from Financial Planning, data partner FINTRX gathered the rankings by scraping registered investment advisory firms’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The resulting group of the largest 150 RIAs based in the U.S. spans 3,844 financial advisors and nearly 13,500 employees. 

Follow this link to see FP’s list, and check out the feature story of the 2026 RIA Leaders study, “The custody fee conundrum.” 

Notes: FP’s data partner for the RIA Leaders feature, FINTRX, produced the ranking by applying the following six criteria to firms’ required SEC Form ADV filings in August:

• Firms must have zero registered representatives of a broker-dealer.
• At least 50% of the firm’s clients must be individuals or high net worth individuals.
• Firms must not list commissions as a compensation arrangement.
• Firms must have more than zero financial planning clients.
• Firms must not list commission-taking businesses in “other business activities.”
• Firms cannot be affiliated under common ownership with commission-taking businesses.

In the absence of an official regulatory classification and definition for the titles “financial planner” or “financial advisor,” FP is citing the numbers available through FINTRX’s analysis of how many “producing financial advisors” there are at each firm. While client assets under management remains a fluid figure tied to constantly shifting asset values, incoming and outgoing client assets and a number of other factors, RIAs typically state their latest available AUM each March in SEC filings. Some firms later update those figures in amended filings.

In the wake of the revelations involving Forbes and Shook Research (now called Veritant), it is important to state that no members of the teams at FP and FINTRX exchanged any money in the production of RIA Leaders, and no RIAs listed in the feature paid anything for their places in the rankings.