Edge 100 RIAs: AI Won’t Alter Client-Advisor Ratios
Artificial intelligence is gaining rapid traction across wealth management as leaders of registered investment advisors and their vendors make the business case for the new technology with terms like “efficiency” and “productivity.”
But even as AI speeds up preparations for meetings, taking notes, writing client messages and doing investment research, will these firm leaders also be upping their client-to-advisor ratios? Do RIA executives think that working faster means advisors have extra time to take on more clients? Or do they plan on using the efficiencies to do more with their existing client base?
The RIA Edge 100 list of registered investment advisors considers employee-to-client ratios at advisory firms as part of its methodology in identifying the fastest-growing firms that also follow best practices. On average, RIA Edge 100 firms had about 70 client accounts per advisor in 2026, with a wide range around both sides of that average. That figure, calculated from the firms’ Form ADVs, is slightly lower than some national averages but remains relatively consistent with prior years despite advancements in technology.
Executives running the RIAs on this year’s RIA Edge 100 list don’t anticipate AI advancements freeing up their advisors’ time simply to take on even more clients. They do not anticipate changing their client-to-advisor ratios, which many say is driven by a business strategy of maintaining high service standards. Rather, these firm leaders say, AI will give them more time to deepen relationships with their current client base, train younger advisors and staff members, and expand the investment research and knowledge base these advisors bring to their work.
Stephanie James, partner and managing director of advisor services for Wescott Financial Advisory Group, said the firm has maintained a team-based approach to working with clients through the years, with no set target of advisor-to-client ratios. Generally, the firm has a range of 50 to 70 households per advisor, with a cap of 100 households.
“It depends on how leveraged an advisor is, how experienced an advisor is, the complexity of the underlying households,” she said. “It’s still a pretty wide range.”
Wescott, which has 25 financial advisors and more than $4 billion in client assets, has two core advisors and one professional client service representative per client, with additional subject matter experts deployed as needed. The system is geared toward both providing exceptional client service and ensuring business continuity for the firm, founded in 1987.
“We need to make sure that we don’t have any advisors feeling like they don’t have enough capacity to handle a client, that they’re feeling like they can be more proactive in planning with clients, rather than reactive, and they can have a quick response time,” James said.
Carrie Delgott, president, chief operating officer and chief compliance officer for Philadelphia-based Wescott, said the firm is implementing artificial intelligence into its workflows, but she doesn’t expect it to significantly shift the firm’s advisor-to-client ratios.
“I don’t think you’re going to find 25% efficiency, at least in our model,” Delgott said. “If you’re already operating at a pretty strong foundation, it’s going to be at the fringes where you may find some efficiency.”
Delgott characterized AI’s use as going “deeper, not wider” in client relationships, as AI speeds up meeting prep, meeting notes, draft communications and pulling data from various systems.
“Advisors are saying that AI can take care of some of that for me while I’m moving on now into diving deeper into the questions my client has had for me,” she said.
None of that is possible, she noted, if firms don’t practice “strong data hygiene” and ensure accuracy of data storage and use across systems. Otherwise, she said firms risk having a “junk in, junk out” experience.
Invisible Efficiency
Evan Roth, founder and co-CEO of New York City-based BBR Partners, said the RIA Edge 100 firm maintains a deliberately low client-to-advisor ratio of 10 to 15 families per advisor for its roughly 200 ultra-high-net-worth clients.
Roth said the firm has maintained that ratio consistently since its founding in 2000 and that it reflects the commitment required to provide coverage to clients with average assets of $150 million or more.
“The ethos of the firm was set up from the beginning … having families know that we are one call away, one email, one text and that when that happens, there is an expectation, both on the family’s part and on our part, for immediate attention to whatever the need is,” he said. “If you’re going to be available 24/7 for your family’s needs in order to be able to create some sort of work-life balance, you have to structure the firm where the advisor is working with a smaller group of clients.”
The 10 to 15 client threshold, Roth said, started out as intuition, but has since been validated through quantitative measures and tracking. BBR Partners, using that ratio, has more than doubled its AUM over the past decade, from about $10.9 billion in 2016 to $36 billion today, with no acquisitions. The firm received a minority investment from Lincoln Peak Capital in 2010.
“We have a laundry list of things that we use and that our management team uses to be able to evaluate capacity,” Roth said. “But we also use the subjectivity of having our managers focus on their staff, so that there is a dialogue established of when advisors feel like they’re drinking from a fire hose, or where they feel like they have capacity.”
Currently, Roth and his team are implementing AI through tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot. He said security and regulatory compliance are top of mind, which has them steering clear of other public AI platforms.
And while he does see it as a powerful tool for the firm that boosts efficiency, he sees it adding “invisible efficiency” that makes the advisors more impactful for clients, without changing the fundamental relationship or needs.
“We’re not going to fundamentally change the number of advisors to families that they cover as a result of AI, because you still want to talk to everybody, you still want to have portfolio reviews, you still want to use judgment,” he said. “Those are hard. There’s no right or wrong in those sorts of questions, and you’re going to need judgment on the other side from your advisor to figure out what to do.”
Seen, Understood and Cared For
Kristen Bauer, CEO of Seattle-based Laird Norton Wetherby, said the $17 billion wealth manager and trust company evaluates advisors’ focus across key areas: revenue/client complexity, business development, mentorship and team development, and involvement in strategic projects.
The method allows the firm to take a team-based approach while shifting advisors’ priorities in response to demand and bandwidth.
“It might be a different allocation for each advisor,” Bauer said. “Somebody might join us, and they’re not quite fully up to capacity yet on their client load, so we might put them on projects until we can get them in the wings to accept some new clients. It’s a constant ongoing conversation and assessment.”
LNW has its roots as a single-family office, the Laird North Trust, which later became Laird Norton Wealth Management and, in 2022, merged with Wetherby Asset Management.
The family office ethos persists at the firm, with clients having a strategic lead advisor, a tactical day-to-day person and a client service associate for things like account openings and wire transfers. From there, Bauer said, experts at the firm may come in to work on areas such as a trust or an estate plan.
“No family is the same, and so every team is somewhat different,” she said. “We feel like we can’t just do a cookie-cutter approach, because you want to leverage somebody’s strengths, and no one advisor has all the answers. We want to facilitate great teamwork for the clients.”
That teamwork approach is partly why advisors are not just compensated on revenue but also on other metrics, such as performance-based bonuses and business development incentives, Bauer said.
In the meantime, the firm is using AI within its closed technology platform to create “behind-the-scenes” efficiencies for the advisors’ benefit. Bauer stressed the walled-off nature of their AI deployments keeps client data safe and the firm on the right side of SEC and state regulations.
She noted that AI has been particularly valuable in quickly synthesizing investment diligence and portfolio recommendations that previously required manual compilation of multiple research documents. However, Bauer sees the human element as being irreplaceable, especially for sensitive conversations where clients need to feel “seen, understood and cared for.”
“We’re seeing a lot of efficiencies in research. … It’s taking us a lot less time to be able to develop a really thoughtful plan for a client by utilizing AI on the research side of things, but it’s not changing how we staff,” she said. “We’re continuing to build out our team. … We believe that it allows us to spend more time with our clients and more time on the relationship side of things.”
James and Delgott of Wescott also said that AI can make better inroads in helping train new or junior advisors, including in the “softer skills” of client service.
“If you’re not sure how to respond if a client tells you they’re terminally ill, can you get some quick resources at your fingertips to be able to navigate the relationship? It’s really relationship management,” James said.
“I think we’re going to see an enhancement in training advisors in those softer skills … in addition to some more in-depth planning and being able to locate resources, I think that relationship management skill, hopefully, we will see a lift there,” she said.