Average RIA Deal Size Surges to $1.2 Billion in Early ’26

Who wants to make a deal?

Pretty much anyone and everyone in the RIA space, lately. The year is off to the fastest start ever for mergers and acquisitions involving registered investment advisors. There were a record 93 transactions in the first three months of 2026, which tied the third quarter of 2025 for the most deals in a single quarter, per recent data from DeVoe & Company. M&A has been accelerating for a long time, and almost every year since at least 2013 has set a new highpoint in deal volume.

“Many arrows point toward another record year,” said David DeVoe, founder and CEO of the company, in the report.

All Firms Must Go?

The 93 deals in the first quarter were 24% higher than the 75 observed during the first quarter of 2025, and 43% above the 65 in the first three months of 2024, per DeVoe. But it’s not just the volume of transactions that has been increasing. Additionally, the size of firms being acquired has trended upward, with two-thirds of the deals being purchases of RIAs with more than $500 million in assets under management. That’s significant, as half of the deal volume in 2023 involved firms with $500 million or less. 

A separate report by Marshberry identified 94 wealth advisory deals during Q1 (close enough, right?). That company cited the biggest acquirers as:

• Hightower Advisors, which announced six purchases.
• Savant Wealth Management, which bought five firms.
• EP Wealth Advisors, which picked up four.

They Might Be Giants. Even as the average size of acquisitions by AUM has risen from $819 million in 2023 to nearly $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, the biggest companies (those with $5 billion and up) have not been selling much faster than in the past, DeVoe found. At 14 such deals during the first quarter, the category is on pace to match the 36 transactions in all of 2025, up from 34 in 2024, according to the report. 

That raises the age-old question, “Is it better to be a small fish in a big pond, or a goldfish in a pond lined with doubloons?”