The RIA Talent Report

The Headline Finding

55 days, against an industry median near 100

Wealth management firms plan their hiring around borrowed numbers. The time-to-fill benchmarks most RIA owners quote come from general industry survey data, which was never built to describe a search for a lead advisor at a fifteen-person independent firm or an operations leader at a multi-family office.

Across our completed searches, the median time from search kickoff to accepted offer is 55 days. SHRM's benchmarking puts the general time-to-fill median near 100 days. The gap is roughly 45 days, which for most firms is the difference between filling a seat inside one quarter and carrying it into the next.

We are not claiming a better process in the abstract. The gap has one structural cause, and it is worth stating plainly because it also tells a firm when hiring a specialist will not help. We work one market and nothing else, so most searches open with candidates we have already spoken to rather than candidates we still have to find. The median time from kickoff to our first candidate introduction is 15 days, measured across the 30 most recent searches where both dates are recorded.

The corollary matters too. Because the clock stops at offer acceptance and not at the start date, a 55-day search still means a seat that stays empty for another two to six weeks while the candidate works a notice period. Firms that plan around the fill date rather than the start date are surprised by that every time.

Methodology

How these numbers are measured

This section is the reason the report exists. A median with no stated population, window, or start and stop condition is a marketing claim. Below is everything needed to check ours, argue with it, or reproduce it against your own data.

Population

Every search counted here was run by The Well Recruiting Solutions for an independent RIA, a wealth management firm, a bank wealth management division, or a multi-family office in the United States. We do not recruit outside wealth management, so no cross-industry normalization is applied and none is needed. The Well was founded in 2023 and has worked in this market only.

What counts as a placement

One placement is one candidate who accepted a written offer for a W-2 role with a client firm, counted in the calendar month the offer was accepted. If that candidate later declines or leaves, we record it as a fall-off and track it separately. We do not subtract it from the month in which the offer was accepted, because doing so would quietly restate a month we had already published. Test records created in our CRM are excluded.

Not counted as placements, because we do not do this work: advisor book transfers, recruiting tied to a firm's acquisition of another practice, merger and acquisition advisory, and contract or 1099 engagements. Every figure in this report is a W-2 hire into an open seat.

When the clock starts and stops

Time to fill starts at search kickoff, which we define as the intake meeting where the client signs off on the role definition and the compensation range. It stops on the date the candidate accepts the written offer. It does not stop at the candidate's start date, which is typically two to six weeks later and is governed by a notice period rather than by the search.

Time to first introduction starts at the same kickoff and stops when the first qualified candidate is formally introduced to the client.

Date ranges

• Placement volume: the twelve months from May 1, 2025 through April 30, 2026. We use a closed twelve-month window rather than a year-to-date count so the figure does not drift after publication.
• Time to first introduction: the 30 most recent searches carrying both a recorded kickoff date and a recorded introduction date, as of July 29, 2026.
• Median time to fill: our completed searches as tracked in Vault, the internal search intelligence system we run the desk on.

Sources, and where they change

Placement counts come from two sources across this window, and we name which is which rather than blending them silently. For May 2025 through April 2026, the count is our Chief Operating Officer's audited monthly placement confirmation, a manual review of every closed search. From May 2026 forward, the count is produced automatically from the offer-acceptance date recorded in our CRM. The two methods agreed on the overlap month we tested against each other.

Limits of this data

• These medians describe our searches, not the market. They are a benchmark for what a single-market search process produces. They are not a survey of what every RIA experiences hiring on its own.
• The comparison figure is general, not sector-specific. The roughly 100-day industry median is general time-to-fill benchmarking. No widely accepted wealth-management-specific median exists, which is part of why we started publishing ours.
• We left a figure out on purpose. This edition publishes no total client-firm count. Two of our internal systems currently return different numbers for it, and we will not print a figure we cannot reconcile. It appears in the 2027 edition or not at all.

Fee structure, disclosed for context

Our placement fee is 25 percent of the hired candidate's first-year on-target earnings. We disclose it inside a benchmark report on purpose. Time-to-fill numbers are not comparable across firms with undisclosed or variable fee structures, and fee opacity is one of the most common complaints RIA owners raise about search firms.

Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to hire a financial advisor at an independent RIA?

The median across The Well's completed searches is 55 days from search kickoff to accepted offer. General industry time-to-fill benchmarking from SHRM puts the median near 100 days for the same milestone. A firm running the search itself, without a specialist pipeline already in place, should plan closer to the 100-day figure than the 55-day one.

What does time to fill mean in this report?

The clock starts at search kickoff, the intake meeting where the client signs off on the role definition and compensation range. It stops on the date the candidate accepts the written offer. It does not include the candidate's notice period, so the seat is typically filled two to six weeks after the 55-day mark.

How many placements is this benchmark based on?

57 completed placements across the twelve months ending April 30, 2026, all of them W-2 hires at independent RIA and wealth management firms. Monthly volume across that window ranged from zero to nine.

Does this describe the whole RIA market or just The Well?

Just The Well. These are first-party figures from our own completed searches, not a market survey. They are a benchmark for what a single-market specialist search process produces, which is a different question from what the average RIA experiences hiring on its own.

What kinds of roles are excluded from the count?

Advisor book transfers, recruiting tied to a firm's acquisition of another practice, merger and acquisition advisory work, and contract or 1099 engagements are all excluded, because The Well does not do that work. Every placement counted is a W-2 hire into an open seat.

How often is The RIA Talent Report published?

Annually. This is the 2026 edition, published July 29, 2026. The 2027 edition will use the same population, clock definitions, and closed-window approach so the year-over-year comparison holds. Any change to a definition will be stated, with the prior year restated alongside it.