Thrivent Plans Another Hiring Spree for 2026
Thrivent, a Minneapolis-based financial services firm with more than $212 billion in assets under management and advisement, exceeded its hiring goal of 600 new advisors in 2025. This year, the firm continues its major hiring push, planning to add another 600 financial advisors, primarily through new-to-the-industry recruiting.
Thrivent currently has about 3,300 advisors across its affiliations, and they have the option of any of those models, including as virtual advisor employees, solo practitioners, part of a team or within its hybrid independent advisor platform, Thrivent Advisor Network.
“As our industry stares down a talent shortage, advisors are making it abundantly clear to us anyway what they want, and they want flexibility, resources and support,” said Nick Cecere, Thrivent executive vice president and chief distribution officer. “Our goal is to provide a consistent advisor experience that leads with purpose-based advice and allowing the advisor to build their career and build their teams and to work through the ecosystem of different ways to affiliate as they grow and evolve their practice or their teams without leaving Thrivent.”
Cecere said a big part of the recruiting push will be in Thrivent’s virtual advice channel, an employee affiliation. That channel currently has about 200 advisors, 150 of which were hired last year, and Thrivent has plans to double that channel to 400 this year. That would represent one in three new hires.
These virtual advisors can join one of five regional hubs, including Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and Milwaukee, or join an existing practice.
Either way, the channel is meant to be a pathway to becoming a financial advisor and facilitate succession planning for advisors nearing retirement, Cecere said. Those new advisors go through an extensive training program.
“They come into our virtual advice, our employee team, and within 12 to 18 months, they graduate out to either building their own team or joining a team within one of the other areas of our ecosystem, whether it’s in our career system or our independent RIA system,” he said.
Another area of focus for recruiting is bringing second-career individuals onto existing teams. Thrivent works with teams to identify opportunities where they need capacity and identify talent in their communities.
A big part of Thrivent’s strategy is growing the number of advisors who are new to the industry.
“For us, growing capacity or growing the number of advisors is the fuel for our growth,” Cecere said.
Technology is another part of the growth strategy. He points to Thrivent’s Copilot and its proprietary technology hub, which have driven double-digit productivity gains for both new and existing advisors.