Some have posited that the path to asset growth within advisory firms is for more advisors to perform retirement planning consultations. After all, there are more than $45 trillion in retirement assets in the U.S. as of the second quarter of this year, which accounts for more than one-third of all household financial assets.
According to AdvizorPro’s proprietary RIA database, more than 6,500 registered investment advisors in the United States explicitly serve retirement plans as a client type. Collectively, these firms manage nearly $8 trillion in retirement plan assets, representing approximately 18% of the nation’s total retirement savings.
The median firm manages approximately $10 million in retirement plan assets, while the average firm oversees around $1.2 billion, illustrating the concentration of the market among large institutional RIAs. The top 10 firms alone—including Captrust, SageView Advisory Group and Global Retirement Partners—collectively manage over $2.4 trillion, or nearly a third of the total market. These powerhouses each derive the majority of their books (in some cases more than 90%) from qualified plan business, underscoring the strategic scale advantage enjoyed by firms that specialize in employer retirement consulting.
This concentration has intensified over the past year. While total retirement plan assets under management among RIAs rose from $6.6 trillion in early 2024 to $7.96 trillion in 2025, the number of RIAs reporting retirement business declined by 11%, highlighting continued consolidation and the shift toward larger, better-resourced plan consultants. On average, retirement accounts now represent 13% of a firm’s overall book, with just over 100 plan relationships per RIA. The decline in the number of plans, alongside rising AUM, suggests that RIAs are securing fewer but higher-value mandates, often from larger corporate and institutional plans.
As our data shows, scale, specialization and integrated retirement-wealth models are defining the next generation of growth. Firms that can compliantly access defined contribution assets—through plan consulting, managed account solutions, or held-away asset platforms—are best positioned to capture the next wave of retirement-driven inflows.
We’ve seen that several of the fastest-growing advisors are getting a significant share of their AUM from qualified plans. One prime example is the firm that led our Fasting-Growing RIAs in Retirement Plan Consulting for 2025—Capturst. This firm has experienced 80.2% top AUM growth compared to the average growth rate for $1 billion-plus RIAs, which is 27%. Nearly 90% of its assets come from retirement plans.
The story for the second-leading RIA in retirement plan consulting, Sageview Advisory Group, which is in the process of being acquired by Creative Planning, is virtually the same—95% of its assets are in retirement plans. And this acquisition is just one step Creative Planning has taken to grow its retirement solutions division lately.
Gaining access to these retirement plan assets is not straightforward. One route is to utilize a third-party platform, such as Pontera or Future Capital, to access these held-away retirement assets. However, about a year ago, Fidelity limited these companies’ access to their data, citing it as a security risk. Pontera responded with a letter, claiming that Fidelity had restricted clients’ choice of how they receive retirement advice. It’s unclear whether this path will lead to greater access for RIAs to retirement accounts.
On the other hand, there are the retirement recordkeepers who are starting to offer direct data feeds and limited management interfaces, such as AssetMark. Alternatively, there’s retirement income analysis work that can be done using tools such as Income Discovery, although the path to accessing held-away retirement assets doesn’t originate from income projections.
When Americans’ retirement assets are nearly double the country’s gross domestic product, this is where a lot of the country’s wealth is being held, and firms want access to it. Asset managers, fintechs and distributors are also closely watching where retirement assets are allocated. The ultimate winner will be the firm whose advisors compliantly access defined contribution assets and provide retirement planning at scale.