Fidelity apparently has bigger fish to fry.

The financial giant shocked many in the advisor community last week when it told RIAs that, beginning June 30, 2027, they must hold at least $100 million in client assets on Fidelity’s platform to continue using it as a custodian. The threshold previously applied only to advisors newly joining the platform, but will now extend to all firms. “We recognize that change requires thoughtful planning, and Fidelity has committed to providing firms with time to evaluate their options,” a spokesperson said.

And now, we have an idea of the potential impact of the change.

AdvizorPro data identified about 1,150 RIAs across the country that could be affected. For many smaller firms, that means finding a new custodian, a potentially disruptive process that comes as other major industry players are also raising thresholds or changing their offerings. “To essentially terminate long-standing relationships with good clients, it’s surprising and disappointing,” said Dagan LaCorte, a managing member at L&L Partners Wealth Management. “I’ve been with them for 20 years.”

Fidelity, however, said the change would impact just a few hundred firms, less than 1% of its total clearing and custody of assets under administration. A spokesperson said the majority of those firms are multi-custodial.

News to Me

While many advisors received notice about the change, others say they didn’t.

“It seems that everyone in the world knows that this is happening except me,” said Stuart Ruff, founder of Ruff Choices Investment Management. “I’m not anywhere near that [$100 million], and I never will be.” Ruff has used Fidelity as a custodian for about 15 years and said he will likely have to make a switch next year. “It’s not something that I want to spend time doing, but sometimes you’re in a situation where you have no choice,” he said, adding that he doesn’t expect the change to affect client retention.

Disruption Junction. Fidelity’s decision is not an isolated event, but rather the “latest string in custodian chaos,” according to Tim Welsh, founder of consultant Nexus Strategy. “We’ve never seen this many anti-RIA announcements,” Welsh said, adding that changing custodians is one of the biggest disruptions an advisor can face:

• Next year, Charles Schwab will raise the minimum asset level for clients eligible for referral to its Schwab Advisor Network to $5 million. The company also doubled the minimum assets for RIAs participating in the program from $250 million to $500 million earlier this year.
• A Schwab spokesperson previously told Advisor Upside that the change reflects where the program is already headed, adding that more than half of SAN’s net flows come from clients with at least $10 million.
• Altruist, often viewed as a preferred custodian for breakaway advisors, is being acquired by Vanguard, a deal Welsh described as Altruist being “gobbled up.” Meanwhile, BNY Pershing is retiring Wove as a standalone platform and folding its technology into its broader wealth-solutions business, Wealth Management reported.

It all marks a significant shift occurring in the custodian industry, Welsh told Advisor Upside. “Everyone used to think Schwab and Fidelity were their friends,” he said. “Now they’re not.”

Better hire some movers.

An estimated 8.6% of advisors are expected to change firms in 2026, according to a recent Cerulli report. About 15,000 moved in the first half of the year, representing about 5% of the advisor population, per Winthrop & Co. Last year, by comparison, nearly 40,000 advisors moved, which was roughly 4,000 more than the year before, data from ISS show. Part of this stems from dealmaking activity, as mergers and acquisitions involving RIAs continue to push advisors in new directions: LPL Financial’s deal to buy Commonwealth Financial Network last year, for example, netted them some 2,900 advisors. More recently, however, transitions have originated in advisors’ home-office desires, said Michael Rose, Cerulli’s director of wealth management research and a co-author of the report.

“Technology consistently remains the top factor that advisors are considering when making an affiliation change,” Rose said. “The fact that technology is actually ranked more highly than even compensation, that’s really important because it underscores [how] this is only going to accelerate with the innovation we’re seeing in terms of AI.”

What Came First, the Tech or the Pay?

Not everyone thinks technology is the driving force behind advisors’ decision-making. Tech is just the catalyst for an advisor to reconsider their responsibilities and compensation, said Craig Toberman, partner at Toberman Becker Wealth. “Technology is an amazing tool,” he said. “As those capabilities become more widely available, advisors have more freedom to ask, ‘Where can I do the work I enjoy and get paid well for it?’”

The other, larger trend is the increasing number of affiliation structures and options available to advisors. A decade ago, an advisor or team looking to break away from a large broker-dealer had to do the labor of filing paperwork, implementing a CRM system, bringing their clients along and hanging their own shingle, Rose said — in other words, building a business from scratch. “Today, the range of options has changed drastically,” he added. “They can plug into RIA firms that can give them a robust infrastructure to run their practice. They can join an RIA aggregator, where there are actually very robust home-office resources and capabilities.”

Prospect Park. But the reasons behind an individual advisor’s move are often much more specific to that person’s practice and needs. Thomas Balcom, CFP and founder of 1650 Wealth Management, said he is looking for a change this year or in 2027. He said certain costs, like those for compliance, liability insurance and software, “could be reduced through a partnership.” Toberman said many RIA roles also enable more of a focus on serving clients than on prospecting: “For someone who loves the service side of this profession, a bigger sales incentive may not be much of an incentive at all.”

What if that Manet, Babe Ruth home run ball or holographic Charizard Pokémon card were as easy to invest in as SPY?

While collectibles are technically assets, most financial professionals would agree they shouldn’t be treated as traditional investments. Fine art, vintage wine, classic cars and comic books are better viewed as passions than the foundation of a portfolio. But as ETFs continue to evolve, the industry may not be far from packaging paintings, memorabilia and other collectibles in the wrapper.

At a recent ETFGI conference in New York, a panel of industry executives said ETFs might be only a few years away from tracking collectibles, with one saying his firm had even considered the idea of a Pokémon card fund.

Try feeding it some rare candy.

Collect Them All

An ETF investing in specific Pokémon cards or other collectibles may sound outlandish, but plenty of mainstream assets were once considered unconventional. Gold investors used to be called “bugs” and bitcoin was largely viewed as a fringe tech bet. But now, it’s not shocking to see SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) or iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) in advised portfolios.

The demand for art and collectibles is there, said Matthew Newton, head of art advisory at UBS. The problem is creating products that are functional and liquid; that’s why ETFs that hold private equity and credit are required to be majority invested in public assets. An original Picasso may be stunning, but it won’t trade nearly as easily as Apple stock. “Chances are transactions aren’t going to happen in under 24 hours,” Newton told Advisor Upside. “Where it takes the art world a full year to transact $60 billion, the S&P 500 companies do that before lunch.”

The Commerce Comet. Companies such as Rally and Masterworks already allow investors to buy fractional interests in collectibles. Putting those assets into ETFs, however, could make them significantly more approachable.

“Most people want their investments accessible in a brokerage account,” said Eric Balchunas, senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “That’s a very underrated part of ETFs: They take a bunch of stuff that’s a pain in the butt to get and make it trade like equities.”

Balchunas said he wouldn’t be surprised if collectibles eventually make their way into the ETF wrapper. “I frequently joke that an issuer could put Mickey Mantle rookie cards in an ETF, and it would find a price,” he said. Still, he expects the assets to remain a niche corner of the ETF market. “Even if they’re a hit, it will be relatively small compared to the big globs of money going elsewhere.”