No Succession Plan RIA: Your Options Are Better Than You Think
Most RIA owners reach their late 50s without a written succession plan. You're not behind the curve. You're in the majority. The market for well-run advisory practices has never been stronger, and Alaris helps advisors find the right path forward.
Only 42% of RIA firms have a written succession plan, the lowest level ever recorded. With 80+ top buyers on our roster and $2B+ in closed proceeds, Alaris turns that gap into a well-structured opportunity.
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No Plan Doesn't Mean No Options. It Means You Need the Right Partner.
No Succession Plan RIA: What Your Choices Actually Are
Not having a succession plan doesn't eliminate your options. It means they need to be structured carefully. Record M&A activity means well-run practices are attracting serious, committed buyers.
Some sell-side approaches treat no succession plan as a liability, discounting the practice or pushing rushed timelines. That solves the exit problem but not the legacy or economics problem.
Alaris approaches this differently. Through the Ideal Outcome phase, advisors define what they need before any buyer is introduced. For many, the right buyer becomes the succession plan.
No Succession Plan RIA: Four Paths Worth Considering
Each path has different implications for your clients, your team, and your economics. Understanding them gives you real choices.
Partnership Through Acquisition
A compatible buyer acquires your practice and absorbs succession into their platform. Your clients are maintained. Your team typically stays. You exit on a structured timeline with full proceeds.
Phased Ownership Transition
Some buyers structure deals where the seller stays involved during a defined transition period. This preserves client relationships and can improve retention metrics that affect your final proceeds.
Internal G2 Transition
If a capable next-gen advisor exists on your team, a structured internal buyout may be possible. Specialty lenders now finance these transitions, removing the affordability barrier for G2 buyers.
Merger With a Peer Firm
Joining forces with a compatible peer RIA can create scale, shared infrastructure, and a natural succession path. The right merger partner functions as both a growth vehicle and an exit strategy.
The right path depends on your timeline, your clients, and what you need from the transaction. Alaris helps you evaluate all of them.
No Succession Plan RIA: The Real Risk Is Waiting
About 38% of advisors plan to retire within the next decade, representing more than 40% of industry assets. Practices without a plan are approaching that window faster than their owners often realize.
Without a plan, unexpected events force rapid sales at a discount. Cerulli found that 20 to 30 percent of clients may leave after an unplanned founder exit. That attrition reduces your proceeds.
Alaris has closed 100+ transactions for advisors in this situation. Zero break-ups. Starting now, while you have time and options, produces a better outcome than starting under pressure.
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Why the Right Buyer Solves the No Succession Plan RIA Problem
The Industry's Structural Gap
Only 42 percent of RIAs have a written succession plan, the lowest level recorded in recent industry tracking. Most advisors reaching their late 50s are navigating the same situation. The market has adapted. Buyers expect it. The gap is solvable.
How Alaris Reframes the Problem
Alaris treats a missing succession plan as a design problem: match the right buyer to your practice, clients, team, and timeline. Lens scores compatibility across 50+ data points before introductions. The right buyer becomes the structure you were missing.
The Outcome for Sellers
Buyers aligned with your practice protect client relationships because those relationships are part of what they're acquiring. That conviction produces better retention post-close and a cleaner handoff for your team. Zero break-ups across 100+ Alaris transactions reflects this.
No Succession Plan RIA: Common Questions
Yes. Most RIA transactions involve owners without a formal plan. Buyers care about client relationship quality, revenue stability, and transferability. Alaris has closed 100+ transactions for advisors in this situation, with zero break-ups.
With the right buyer, your clients are transitioned into a practice whose model and service approach align with what you've built. Compatibility screening, which is central to the Alaris Process, is specifically designed to protect client retention through a transition.
NO! Buyers want your Gen 2 advisors to have incentives to continue to grow, which often means meaningful equity and compensation incentives. They understand that younger advisors need to be properly aligned with the growth of the practice and therefore want them to have skin in the game. Often, transacting with another firm greatly expands the opportunity for your team.
Not necessarily. Buyers in a competitive process evaluate your practice on its fundamentals: revenue quality, client retention, margins, and growth. A lack of a formal succession plan is common and does not automatically reduce your multiple in a well-run process.
The best strategy depends on your timeline, client relationships, and what you want from the transaction. Alaris evaluates all options, including partnership through acquisition, phased transitions, and peer mergers, and helps you identify which structure fits your specific situation.
This is one of the most common outcomes Alaris facilitates. A compatible buyer absorbs the succession function: they maintain client relationships, support your team, and provide a structured path for you to exit on your own terms and timeline.
Alaris uses the Lens platform to score compatibility between your practice and 80+ active buyers across 50+ data points. Only buyers with genuine alignment are introduced. That approach produces stronger outcomes than a broad auction process for advisors with or without a formal plan.