Why Wirehouses Are Losing Fewer Advisors

It’s no secret that advisors are leaving the profession, but there’s a lot going on under the surface.

The overall financial advisor headcount dropped again in 2025, with more professionals exiting the field than entering, according to a recent analysis by data firm AdvizorPro, but the rate of attrition varied by channel. While the independent advisor segment remained the runaway winner, the wirehouse channel lost fewer advisors than in previous years, signalling a potential shift in how the largest wealth management companies are retaining talent.

“Traditionally, you come into the industry, you potentially start at a wirehouse: your JPMorgans, your Merrills, your Wells. You put in your time in there and then move on,” said Hesom Parhizkar, cofounder of AdvizorPro. “It looks like that’s kind of changing now.”

Greener Pastures

One reason for the decline in attrition is that the industry’s largest firms are implementing more programs to keep advisors interested in staying put, Parhizkar said. UBS, for example, recently rolled out its 2026 compensation plan, which will raise the payout rate for advisors generating between $1 million and $3 million in revenue by half a percentage point. “They understand that folks are leaving, and sometimes in droves,” Parhizkar said. “They’re doing more incentives to allow them to stay and debunk the whole, ‘Hey, the grass is greener on the other side’ [by saying] ‘no, it’s better here.’”

In 2025, wirehouses lost just 1,864 advisors to other channels, compared with 3,501 in 2021, according to AdvizorPro data. The research also found:

• Broker-dealers lost 4,057 advisors to other channels in 2025, a figure that’s significantly lower than in 2021, when the channel’s headcount decreased by more than 13,000.
• More than 17,000 advisors joined the RIA channel from other channels, up from 8,090 in 2021.

“[The wires are] making it much more attractive to stay,” Parhizkar said.

M&A Support Line. But the most common advisor move was actually within the RIA channel.  Indie-to-indie shifts were the most common for advisors on the move, with dually-registered firms — those operating as both a broker-dealer and RIA — coming in second in terms of within-channel movement.

Parhizkar said part of the rising RIA headcount stems from increasingly available tools that help advisors venture out on their own. “A lot of these private wealth teams are dually registered, and then if they do break away… they usually just file as an RIA, so there’s some of that as well,” he added. “There’s a lot of [M&A] infrastructure nowadays. In the last couple of years, a lot of companies have spun up to help facilitate breakaways, whether that’s [using] technology, compliance or financing.”