1. AI Is Repricing Financial Advice. What Will Clients Still Pay Advisors For?

Financial advice is being repriced right now, and most of the industry is charging for the part that's headed to zero. Somewhere in the depths of your CRM right now is your best future client. She's 40 years old. She has a good income, a mortgage, kids, equity comp she doesn't fully understand, and about ten more years of compounding before her balance sheet makes her a qualified prospect for every firm in this industry. And this morning, before she had coffee, she used AI six times. It summarized her inbox. It rewrote a memo. It answered a question about her health plan. It planned her kid's birthday party. She doesn't call it artificial intelligence anymore. She calls it "hang on, let me ask." — Nyle Bayer

2. Gen Z and Millennials Aren’t Abandoning Financial Goals. They’re Doing Them Differently

It can be said that every generation finds ways to march to the beats of their own drummers, but when it comes to financial matters, millennials and Gen Z truly are doing things their way. For advisors, that’s not something to fight, but it is something to embrace. Consider the findings in a new survey from U.S. Bank, which actually dispels some of the preconceived notions about these two major younger demographics. Relevant to advisors is that despite previous arguments to the contrary, there are ample signs that younger investors and workers want, or even need to work with advisors because they’ve not forsaken “traditional” financial goals such as home ownership and retirement planning. — Todd Shriber

3. Common Recruiting Mistakes Firms Make

Recruiting financial advisors has never been more competitive. Advisors today have more options than ever, from independent RIAs and hybrid platforms to aggregators, broker-dealers and breakaway models. They’re also on the move, with the number of experienced advisors changing firms increasing by 16% in 2025 compared to 2024. Outdated recruiting strategies often make it difficult to attract top talent. Many recruiting efforts fail not because firms lack resources, but because they misunderstand what actually matters to advisors when considering a move. Compensation is important, but it’s rarely the deciding factor. Advisors are increasingly focused on technology, operational support, transition experience and long-term growth potential. — Larry Reiter

4. Difficult Clients: Is the Problem the Client or the Relationship?

Is it the Client, or the Relationship? Every advisor knows the feeling. A name comes up on the calendar or flashes on the phone. You can already feel the stress. Maybe the calls have become more frequent, the conversations more frustrating, or every recommendation seems to invite another round of questions. Whatever the reason, something in the relationship has changed. And that’s worth thinking about. Is this really a difficult client—or has the client relationship become difficult? — Don Connelly

5. The Great Wealth Transfer Isn’t Just About Money. It’s About Who Makes the Decisions

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance your financial life looks different than it did five or ten years ago. Maybe you’ve taken a more active role in your family’s financial decisions. Maybe you’re the one making the investment decisions now, whether you expected to be or not. Maybe an inheritance, a divorce, the loss of a spouse, or your own hard-won career success has put you in the driver’s seat. Or maybe you’ve always managed your own money and you’re simply tired of receiving financial guidance that wasn’t built with you in mind. — Clara C. Parris

6. How DXJ Ranked #1 over the Last 10 Years

Japan's equity market has spent the past decade dismantling assumptions that took a generation to form. Deflationary expectations had become the default lens, and with them, the presumption that Japanese equities had little to offer. Japan was, for most, a tactical consideration at best, an interesting country allocation but rarely a conviction position. The contrast with that earlier era is now difficult to ignore. Policy is pulling in the same direction as corporate behavior, the 1989 peak has finally been surpassed,1 and Japan's recovery is being led by exactly the industries, technology, defense and global export champions, that give it structural rather than merely cyclical credibility. — Christopher Gannatti

7. The Ripple Effect of Giving: How Advisors Can Multiply Their Philanthropic Impact

As financial advisors, we spend our careers helping clients make intentional decisions about giving back financially. We ask what they want their wealth to accomplish, how they want to support the causes they care about and what kind of legacy they hope to leave behind. But how often do we ask ourselves the same questions? — Heather Lindsley

8. The Rainmaker Problem: Why Your Next-Generation Advisors Fear Sales

If you’ve been running your advisory firm for a few decades, chances are you’re a natural rainmaker. Through persistence, hard work, and a knack for building relationships, you’ve grown a successful business. You honed your sales skills in an era when “hustle” was the name of the game, and the industry was heavily focused on sales-driven growth. But today’s environment looks different. The same strategies that worked for you in the past may not be enough to sustain your firm’s growth into the future. Technology has transformed how clients interact with advisors. People have more access to information than ever before, are increasingly skeptical, and have no shortage of options. — Kristin Harad

9. Protected Bitcoin: Improving Portfolios Utilizing a Stable Risk Framework

As Bitcoin has matured into a $1.43 trillion asset and emerging global store of value, investors face a key challenge: gaining exposure while managing its elevated volatility. Conventional portfolio sizing approaches are fundamentally limited, typically suggesting a modest allocation (1-2%) to avoid material increases in overall portfolio risk. — Calamos

10. RIA Marketing 101: 7 Basics Every Financial Advisory Firm Should Be Doing Consistently

There's still a SIGNIFICANT opportunity to become a familiar, useful presence for the prospective clients you want to reach. When your firm regularly answers their questions, shares relevant ideas, and follows up thoughtfully, you give prospects more opportunities to discover you, understand your value, and start a conversation. That's how I think about connecting marketing activity to growth: build awareness with the right audience, turn interest into leads, nurture those relationships, and help qualified prospects become clients who bring new AUM and revenue. — Joel Crampton

11. Is Your Prospect Experience Creating Friction or Momentum?

A prospect completes an online questionnaire before their first meeting with an advisor. A few days later, they're asked to provide much of the same information during a discovery call. After deciding to move forward, they encounter yet another onboarding process requiring additional forms, documents, and account setup steps. Individually, none of these tasks seem unreasonable. Together, they can feel repetitive and disconnected. An advisor may have deep expertise and a strong planning process. But before prospects experience that expertise, they're evaluating how easy it is to work with the firm, and this repetition could be a turnoff. — Chris Grant