The Largest Registered Investment Advisors

The firms at the top run different models, and the ranking metric flatters some more than others. Total client assets reward institutional advisory and retirement-plan books; discretionary AUM rewards managed money. The gap is widest at the very top.

Mariner Wealth Advisors, of Overland Park, Kansas, is the largest by total client assets at about $550 billion. The figure is advisement-heavy: its Mariner Institutional division added roughly $292 billion of assets under advisement through the January 2025 acquisition of Cardinal Investment Advisors, per Mariner, so its discretionary AUM sits well below the headline. Mariner is backed by private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners, which took a minority stake in 2021, and by Neuberger Berman Capital Solutions, which invested in October 2024, per Financial Planning and InvestmentNews. In 2025 it sold its independent-advisor arm, Mariner Advisor Network and its roughly $31 billion, to LPL Financial, concentrating on employee advisors, per LPL.

Fisher Investments, founded by Ken Fisher and based in Plano, Texas, manages about $441 billion, almost all of it discretionary, across private clients and institutions. On managed money it is effectively the largest independent RIA in this ranking. In January 2025 Advent International and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) completed a roughly $3 billion minority investment valuing Fisher at $12.75 billion, per Advent International; Ken Fisher retained more than 70% of voting shares. It was one of the largest private-capital deals in the US wealth-management sector and put a sovereign wealth fund directly on the cap table.

Creative Planning, also of Overland Park, reported about $370 billion in combined assets in mid-2025. Chief executive Peter Mallouk keeps majority control alongside two minority backers: General Atlantic, which invested in 2020, and TPG Capital, the buyout arm of TPG Inc. (NASDAQ: TPG), which took a substantial-minority stake in September 2024, per TPG. Its 2025 acquisition of SageView Advisory Group, a $250 billion retirement-plan advisor formerly backed by Aquiline Capital Partners, lifted the combined firm to about $640 billion in total client assets as of September 2025, per Creative Planning, though most of the addition is retirement-plan advisement rather than discretionary AUM.

Hightower Advisors, of Chicago, holds about $354 billion across a partnership of affiliated practices and is controlled by Thomas H. Lee Partners, which first invested in 2018. Its defining 2025 move was buying a majority stake in NEPC, a Boston institutional investment consultant and OCIO provider. The combined group reported about $1.8 trillion in assets under administration but only about $258 billion in assets under management, per InvestmentNews, a single deal that captures the AUM-versus-advisement gap in one line.

Below the top four, ownership diverges further. One firm is now sovereign-owned, one is backed by a hedge fund and a group of families, and the fastest growers are permanent-capital roll-up machines.

Edelman Financial Engines, of Santa Clara, California, manages about $308 billion for 1.27 million clients as of June 2025 and is, on discretionary AUM, the largest independent RIA, a distinction Barron's has given it for seven straight years, per Edelman. It is majority-owned by Hellman & Friedman, which took it private in 2018, with Warburg Pincus holding a minority stake since 2021; founder Ric Edelman remains the largest individual shareholder. Its scale comes from workplace retirement advice as much as private wealth, a different engine from the roll-ups.

Corient, based in Miami, is the US wealth arm of Canada's CI Financial and held about $224 billion at the end of 2025. In August 2025 Mubadala Capital, the asset-management arm of Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company, completed a C$12.1 billion take-private of CI Financial, per CI Financial, making Corient one of the few large US RIAs controlled by a Gulf sovereign platform. The same Abu Dhabi money sits in Fisher's ownership through ADIA, a measure of how far sovereign capital has moved into US wealth management.

Rockefeller Capital Management, of New York, managed about $187 billion as of Q3 2025 across wealth, asset management, and investment banking, led by chief executive Greg Fleming. It is not private-equity-backed in the usual sense: its majority investor is hedge fund Viking Global Investors, alongside the Rockefeller and Desmarais families, the latter through Power Corporation of Canada's IGM Financial. A 2025 recapitalization led by Mousse Partners, Progeny 3, and Abrams Capital valued the firm above $6.6 billion, roughly double its valuation two years earlier, per InvestmentNews.

Further down, the fastest-growing firms are built by acquisition and financed by private equity. Wealth Enhancement Group, backed by TA Associates and Onex, was the industry's busiest buyer in 2025. Mercer Advisors, owned by Genstar Capital, Oak Hill Capital, and Altas Partners, and Cerity Partners, recapitalized by Genstar in 2025, grow the same way. The pattern is consistent: a sponsor supplies capital, the platform acquires smaller practices, and total client assets compound faster than any single firm could grow on its own.

The largest RIAs manage money for wealthy families, business owners, and institutions through diversified portfolios of funds, separate accounts, and, increasingly, private markets. As their ultra-high-net-worth client bases have grown, they have built dedicated alternatives programs, committing to private equity, private credit, venture capital, and real estate through funds and direct deals.

That makes the RIA channel a distribution engine, not just an allocator. Rather than each advisor underwriting a fund directly, RIAs reach private markets through feeder funds, interval funds, and model portfolios assembled on platforms like iCapital and CAIS. Blackstone's retail vehicles, BREIT and BCRED, showed the scale this can reach, and managers from KKR to Vanguard now build products specifically for the wealth channel.

For a fund manager, that structure changes who the buyer is. The decision often sits with a central investment committee or an alternatives-research team, not the client-facing advisor, and one approval can place a fund across thousands of end clients. The gatekeeper is the platform and the home-office diligence team, which is where coverage has to start.

Not every large RIA allocates to outside private funds, and those that do gate access tightly. Home-office research teams approve a short list of managers for the whole firm, and placement on iCapital or CAIS still means clearing a diligence process. Reaching a firm means finding the person who runs alternatives research, not the nearest advisor.

The appetite is real but uneven. Fisher Investments and Edelman Financial Engines are mostly discretionary public-markets managers with limited third-party fund programs. Multi-family offices like Pathstone and Rockefeller Capital Management, and roll-ups building ultra-high-net-worth platforms, are the more active private-fund buyers. Knowing which firm sits where saves months of misdirected outreach.

Ownership matters too. A firm just bought by private equity may be integrating platforms and pausing new manager relationships, or it may be widening an alternatives menu to justify its valuation. The same deal can open or close a door depending on timing.

Altss maps registered investment advisors within its coverage of 30,000+ institutional investors, RIAs, and family offices. It tracks each firm's investment teams, ownership changes, and publicly observable activity, with verified decision-makers refreshed on a sub-30-day cycle, in-platform. The data identifies who runs alternatives at a firm and how its ownership is shifting, so outreach reaches the desk that can say yes.

Figures are drawn from each firm's own disclosures and the following authoritative sources.