It’s not about the money. OK, it’s not only about the money.

Thrivent, a Minneapolis-based financial services firm built on Christian principles, recruited 600 advisors last year and plans a repeat performance in 2026, the firm announced this week. “Our recruiting, almost exclusively right now, is new to the industry — people in their second careers and college graduates,” said Nick Cecere, Thrivent’s executive vice president and chief distribution officer. “Our main philosophy around recruiting is looking for good people who believe in the Thrivent mission, our values and our culture.”

The hiring push comes as wealth management faces two major shifts: the rapid expansion of the independent RIA channel and an approaching advisor shortage driven by retirements. As competition for talent intensifies, firms are experimenting with different recruiting strategies. A larger paycheck alone isn’t enough to attract and retain advisors, Cecere said. “Chances are they’re going to leave you to go to another firm for more money, which happens a lot,” he told Advisor Upside.

The Wire(house)

Other firms are also ramping up recruiting. Bank of America’s wealth management division is pursuing a more aggressive hiring strategy this year as it looks to expand its roster of roughly 15,000 financial advisors, according to AdvisorHub. In the late 2010s, Merrill Lynch largely stepped away from bidding wars for top-tier talent and instead focused on advisor training programs. But over the past three years, the wirehouse has increased its emphasis on “getting and retaining” advisors “at a higher rate,” Bank of America Co-President Dean Athanasia said during an RBC conference this week.

Advisors are looking for a firm that is deeply invested in their long‑term success, said Kenneth Correa, head of business and client development at the firm. “That’s where Merrill continues to lean in through investment in platforms, resources and training that help advisors grow, scale and deliver more value to clients,” he told Advisor Upside.

Still, there’s a lot of competition from independent RIAs. Wirehouses have deep pockets (Morgan Stanley’s recruiting loan tab is near $5 billion) but retaining advisors is becoming more difficult as many consider moving to the independent channel, according to a recent Cerulli report:

• Some 71% of advisors say they would choose an independent channel if they were to switch.
• Also, 88% of independent RIAs say they are very likely to remain affiliated with their current firm for the next 12 months. Nearly all of those advisors say they would switch to another independent RIA if they did move.

What’s in a name? Wirehouses still have brand name on their side, but beyond that, they need to convince advisors that they are a tailwind and not overly onerous from a compliance, legal, risk, ops perspective, said Jason Diamond, president of Diamond Consultants. “Instead of trying to pound the table on capabilities, try to solve the issues that advisors actually point to when they leave a wirehouse: culture and lack of freedom, flexibility and control,” he told Advisor Upside.

What if we told you BNY Pershing has dozens of employees it doesn’t pay and who never take a day off? Sounds farfetched, but it’s the truth.

Speaking at the Future Proof Citywide conference in Miami Beach, BNY Pershing Managing Director Ben Harrison said the firm has deployed 160 “digital employees” powered by agentic AI, each with an employee badge number and performance-assessment framework. They work on a range of administrative and operational tasks well-suited for AI, all overseen by human managers who track their productivity and ensure reliable outputs.

“We are bringing teams of people together across business development, operations and engineering to build agents to do specific tasks, and then we are putting those tools in the hands of people doing important work for the firm,” Harrison said. “We have more than 41,000 human employees. We encourage everyone to use AI in their work.”

The firm’s enthusiastic but cautious use of AI (agentic and otherwise) is a sign of exciting things to come, Harrison said, but like Carson Group CEO Burt White and Hightower Advisors CEO Larry Restieri, he was quick to emphasize the durability of the human connection in the advisor-client relationship. It was a theme repeated throughout the three-day Citywide conference: agentic AI has huge potential in the wealth management industry, but firm leaders cannot lose sight of its risks and limitations. Ultimately, agentic AI should empower advisors, not replace them.

More Time for Human Connection

“What I find most exciting is the conversation around the productivity side of AI,” White said. “AI tools should take repetitive or tedious tasks off the advisor’s plate and create greater opportunity for advisors to spend time on the human side, to maintain the human connection with their clients. AI should give advisors more time and more access to expertise. The payoff should be having more time for humans to connect.”

Research shows many advisors agree:

• 87% of advisors use or plan to use AI tools in the near future, according to ISS Market Intelligence.
• 58% of advisors use AI to summarize information, while at least 55% use it to generate written content or support general brainstorming and research.
• 42% employ AI in investment research, and 21% create visual content with AI tools.

“Agentic AI is arriving in the advisor world, but I don’t think we’ve seen a big change in the advisor-client relationship,” Restieri said. “There have been productivity gains from AI, no question, and we’ll see more of that, but I have trouble seeing agentic AI taking the place of advisors. Even really good AI models don’t have the emotional intelligence and the empathy that human advisors bring.”

Agentic AI as CRM. One way agentic AI might fundamentally disrupt the client-advisor relationship is by replacing traditional client relationship management platforms, White believes. “Agentic AI will allow us to deliver on the idea of having a truly individualized experience for each client family,” he said. “If you have the right data in place, I personally believe you’re going to be able to use these tools to replace the traditional CRM that offers all clients the same way to engage with you. That’s what we’re building today.”

Don’t worry, be happy.

It’s the kind of advice that lacks credibility unless you apply it to yourself first. Fortunately, advisors, who spend much of their time trying to keep clients satisfied, may get a boost from the satisfaction many report getting from their own work.

On the Cantril Ladder — a survey scale used to determine happiness and life satisfaction — advisors averaged 7.3 out of a top score of 10 in 2025, up from 6.8 in 2023, according to the latest Kitces Advisor Wellbeing report. In previous years, advisors’ wellbeing levels roughly matched those of the broader US population. Now, advisors are reporting notably higher satisfaction, suggesting financial advice is becoming an increasingly appealing profession.

“Understanding what drives advisor wellbeing is important, not only because it helps to improve the day-to-day experience of individual advisors, but also because low wellbeing across a firm’s advisor base significantly increases the risk of turnover,” it said in the report. And when advisors leave, clients often go with them, reducing profitability and growth.

What Makes Advisors Happy?

There are five key drivers of wellbeing among advisors. The first is experience, with advisors who have spent more time in the industry, or who began their careers at successful or purpose-driven firms, tending to report higher satisfaction. Those who transitioned into financial advice from another career were actually among the happiest. The second factor is the workplace environment. Firms with modern technology stacks and supportive teams tend to foster happier advisors. The report found that 25% of advisors with low tech-stack satisfaction are at high risk of turnover within five years, compared with just 1% of advisors who are satisfied with their technology.

“For me, team and company culture is where my joy and happiness derives,” said Francheska Ruiz, a CFP at Tobias Financial Advisors. She added that as a mother of two children, having flexible hours and the ability to work from home is important to her. “Having a leadership team that is transparent and constantly lifting their teammates goes a long way,” she told Advisor Upside.

Other wellbeing drivers include:

• Autonomy: Advisors value control over their schedules and their level of ownership in the business.
• Revenue per hour: Many advisors seek to move upmarket while working fewer than 40 hours a week. The “sweet spot” for wellbeing typically falls between 40 and 100 client households, with the ideal number decreasing as client wealth increases.
• Having Enough: Advisor wellbeing rises with income, but only to a point. The report finds satisfaction generally increases until about $500,000 in take-home income, after which it plateaus.

When salary and business growth come at the expense of the underlying relationship-centered goals that often motivate advisors in the first place, happiness tends to decline. “Advisors stuck on an endless treadmill of new goals may never feel satisfied,” the report said. “If ‘enough’ is always just out of reach, there’s no true finish line.”