For the second time in as many years, RWM made the Barron’s Top 100 RIA List.
What makes this year’s list especially interesting is both its focus on private equity’s entry into the advisor space — and our decision to avoid that approach.
Follow our history from the original announcement of the firm’s launch, through today, and it’s obvious we were built differently from the start. Any finance shop that came about out of frustration with how Wall Street managed money was not going to take the usual path.
We began with a fierce commitment to the Fiduciary standard. It was genuinely shocking to me that this was not the default setting for brokers or other wealth managers. Making that commitment means we could never cede control of the firm to any part of an industry that is as hyper-focused on profits at any cost (as parts of PE has been).
Everybody in our space is familiar with PE-funded roll-ups that became Franken-firms; we’ve all heard way too many stories about PE-funded acquisitions leading to bad outcomes. It’s not just the fiduciary standard that suffers; there have been aggressive contracts, threats of and actual litigation, and structural changes that changed the vibe of the firm. On the investing side, we see too many pricey, underperforming Alts, annuities, house products, etc. jammed into accounts. But for the outside investor, none of this would occur.
We were unwilling to accept the terms and conditions that came along with a pile of PE capital. And, we didn’t need the capital. Other than our purchase of FutureAdvisor (now Good Advice) from BlackRock, we have grown organically in the mid-double digits.
I am thrilled to be on the Barron’s Top 100 RIA list for the second year in a row. We expect to keep moving up that list until we are in the top half, quartile, and decile over the next decade. And the plan is to do it organically, no strings attached…
Previously:
RWM Makes Barron’s Top 100 RIA Firms! (September 15, 2025)
Succession (January 30, 2026)
Barron’s:
Our 11th annual ranking of independent advisory companies is based on assets managed by the firms, growth, technology spending, succession planning, and other metrics. Barron’s is ranking the largest registered investment advisor firms separately from its broader RIA ranking. Our 2026 mega RIAs each manage over $120 billion in assets, a 33% increase from last year, and staff over 1,000 people. Collectively, the nine firms represent nearly half of the total assets of all ranked firms.
