Tiburon Strategic Advisors' report pegs RIAs as maturing market
The good news: 'growing up' of RIAs means bigger asset inflows
2 min read- Tiburon report identifies the RIA industry as entering a maturation phase.
- Concentration of assets among top 1,000 RIAs signals market maturity.
- Expect slower growth in advisor numbers, but rapid asset growth continues.
Tiburon Strategic Advisors published a massive report on RIAs last week and it uses the “M” word for the industry of registered investment advisors.
“The fee-based financial advisors industry emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s and has subsequently evolved through its expansion and now it’s maturation process,” the report states in its first line.
The Tiburon report, entitled “An initial overview of the fee-based financial advisors (RIA) market”, runs 1,303 pages and its table of contents alone is 20 pages long. I didn’t read past that first line initially.
Isn’t the RIA business just getting going? Brokers are turning independent in greater numbers and consumers are finally catching on to the need for fiduciary counsel? Can we already be talking about maturity of the industry that delivers fiduciary care?
How many RIAs are there? No, seriously, how many?
Chip Roame, managing principal of Tiburon, explains that his report looks at which RIAs are winning the bulk of assets in absolute terms.
“The biggest RIAs are grabbing an increasingly large share of the assets which makes the number of new RIAs somewhat irrelevant,” he says. “If [the biggest RIAs] just grow 20%, they run away with the market. I will call that maturation.” The top 1,000 RIAs control more than 80% to 90% of the assets in their industry, he adds.
Story Timeline
Banks are a mature industry. Pharmaceutical companies are a mature industry. Here is how Investopedia defines mature industry: An industry which has passed both the emerging and the growth phases of industry growth. Earnings and sales grow slower in mature industries than in growth and emerging industries.
What people don’t understand about maturing industries is that their earnings often continue to grow faster in dollar terms, according to Roame. Only the percentage growth declines because of the bigger base of earnings.“Percentage growth rates are declining but the dollars are phenomenal” in the RIA industry,” he says. “That’s a sign of growing up. That’s a good thing. Maturation just sounds bad.”
The Tiburon report notes that the RIA industry grew 40% since 2005 both in terms of advisors and assets.
What does the future hold for the RIA business as far as the report is concerned?
There will be a “slowing of the growth of the number of fee-based advisors but rapid growth in the assets under management,” it states.
Phew.
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