What is wealth management?
Wealth management is ongoing financial advice that combines investment management with planning across a client's whole financial life: taxes, retirement income, estate plans, insurance, charitable giving and, for families with significant assets, how money and businesses pass to the next generation. The investment portfolio is one part of the relationship rather than all of it.
The term describes services, not a legal status. In a joint investor bulletin, the SEC and the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) say the requirements behind financial titles range from rigorous to nothing at all, and that a professional may use a title whether or not he or she is registered or licensed. Regulation attaches to the registration underneath the label: an investment adviser registered with the SEC or a state, or a broker-dealer and its representatives, overseen by FINRA and the SEC.
That is why two firms calling themselves wealth managers can look very different. One may be a fee-only RIA running portfolios and financial plans; another may be a private bank that adds lending and trust services; a third may be a brokerage team selling products on commission. Our guide to the titles, Wealth manager vs. financial advisor, explains how to tell them apart.
This guide is general information, not investment advice.
What does wealth management include beyond investment management?
Financial planning is the backbone. CFP Board, which certifies CFP professionals, requires candidates to complete education, pass an exam, accrue thousands of hours of experience and follow ethical standards that require putting clients' interests first, and says more than 10,000 firms in the U.S. employ CFP professionals.
Tax, estate and insurance planning sit alongside it. J.P. Morgan Private Bank's U.S. site, for example, lists tax strategy, trust and estate planning, life insurance, retirement and asset location, philanthropy and private business advisory as parts of its wealth planning offering, separate from portfolio management.
Larger families add governance. UBS lists family enterprise, philanthropy and a community for emerging successors among the services of its private wealth unit, and J.P. Morgan offers family and family office advisory. These cover how a family makes decisions about shared assets and prepares heirs, which is where wealth management for ultra-high-net-worth clients starts to become private wealth management, covered in our guide What is private wealth management?
Who provides wealth management?
Registered investment advisers. Of the 17,210 SEC-registered investment advisers in Financial ADVSR's count of SEC records, 8,915 draw at least half their regulatory assets under management from individual and high-net-worth clients, based on Form ADV data as of Oct. 1, 2026. That count excludes advisers that are also registered broker-dealers and those that mainly manage private funds. The firms are listed in our RIA directory and wealth manager rankings.
Wirehouses. The large national brokerage firms, covered in our guide What is a wirehouse?, run some of the biggest wealth businesses. Morgan Stanley reported $9.1 billion in wealth management net revenues for the third quarter of 2026, and $3.16 trillion in fee-based client assets in that unit.
Private banks and trust companies. Private banks combine wealth management with banking and lending. Trust companies act as trustees and fiduciaries; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters national banks limited to the operations of a trust company, and a final rule effective April 1, 2026 confirmed they may also conduct non-fiduciary activities.
Multi-family offices and independent broker-dealers. A single-family office serving one family can be excluded from the Investment Advisers Act, but SEC staff say that exclusion applies only to single-family offices, so a firm serving several unrelated families cannot rely on it. Independent broker-dealers support affiliated advisors who sell securities through the broker-dealer, often alongside an advisory business.
Who are wealth management clients?
There is no single industry definition of client tiers, so researchers set their own lines. Capgemini's World Wealth Report 2025 counts high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) as those with at least $1 million in investable assets, excluding a primary residence, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables. It splits them into millionaires next door ($1 million to $5 million), mid-tier millionaires ($5 million to $30 million) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals ($30 million or more).
Capgemini counted 7.9 million HNWIs in the U.S. in 2024, up 7.6%. Below that line, Cerulli Associates groups middle-market and mass-affluent households as those with $100,000 to $2 million in financial assets: 46.9 million households holding $25 trillion at year-end 2025, a share of financial assets that fell from 43% in 2013 to 24% in 2025, according to InsuranceNewsNet's report on Cerulli's research.
Firms draw their own lines too. UBS says ultra-high-net-worth individuals are typically defined as having $10 million or more in investable assets, a third of Capgemini's threshold. For comparison, the Federal Reserve's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances put median U.S. family net worth at $215,900 and the mean at $1.24 million.
How is wealth management priced?
Most wealth managers charge a percentage of the assets they manage. Kitces Research's 2024 study of how advisors do financial planning found that 92% of advisors incorporate asset-based fees in some way and that 86% of advisory firms rely on them as their primary method of charging, up from 82% in 2022.
Fees are usually tiered so the rate falls as assets rise. Kitces reported a median fee of 1% for a $1 million client, and typical fees of 1% to 1.2% for portfolios under $1 million and 0.8% to 1% above $2 million, citing Inside Information's 2024 fee research.
Some firms charge retainers or flat fees not tied to assets. Kitces describes hourly and retainer fees as still small parts of overall industry pricing. How an advisor is paid shapes its conflicts, which our guide to fee-only vs. fee-based pricing covers.
How is the wealth management industry consolidating?
Assets are moving toward independent firms. Cerulli Associates reported in February 2026 that the independent and hybrid RIA channels together held 27% of industry assets in 2024, up from 21% in 2014.
RIAs are also being bought at a record pace. Echelon Partners counted 466 announced wealth management transactions in 2025, up 27.3% from the year before, and a record 185 deals involving firms with at least $1 billion in assets, InvestmentNews reported.
Private equity money drives much of it. Echelon found private equity firms were direct acquirers in 9.4% of 2025 transactions, but financial sponsors, including the RIA platforms they back, were involved in 75.8% of deals. Our guides to RIA aggregators and private equity in wealth management explain how those buyers work.
How is wealth management regulated?
Regulation follows the business, not the label. FINRA's investor guidance says investment advisers are regulated by the SEC or state securities regulators, professionals who buy and sell securities for customers are regulated by FINRA and the SEC, and insurance agents are overseen by state insurance regulators. Many wealth managers hold more than one of those registrations.
The standard of care differs by registration. The SEC says an investment adviser owes a fiduciary duty to its clients under the Advisers Act that applies to the entire relationship, while broker-dealers must act in the best interest of a retail customer when making a recommendation under Regulation Best Interest.
Anyone can check a firm or advisor's registration and disciplinary record on FINRA's BrokerCheck or the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site. Our guide How to check a financial advisor walks through it.