The RIA channel added more than $10 trillion in assets under management over the past year, according to a recently released report.

The total regulated assets under management among RIAs has grown to $82.5 trillion from $70.7 trillion in 2017, a change of almost 17%, according to the 2018 “Evolution Revolution” report from the Investment Adviser Association (IAA) and National Regulatory Services (NRS).

Most of those assets reside in pooled vehicles, with registered investment companies and private investment vehicles accounting for $48.9 trillion of the regulated AUM, nearly 60% of the total. High-net-worth individual accounts, owned by clients with $1 million or more, accounted for $5.7 trillion, or 7.3% of the regulated AUM.

The number of registered advisors has grown by 3.3% over the past year to 12,578, a new record, according to the report. The RIA channel now serves more than 34 million clients.

In 2018, the typical RIA has $359 million in assets under management and nine employees, and it serves 124 client accounts held mostly by individuals—but on average also has at least one pension or profit-sharing plan as a client.

Most RIAs, more than 95%, still charge a fee based on a percentage of a client’s AUM, but sizable portions are charging fixed fees (43% of firms), performance-based fees (37.4%) and hourly charges (29%). Just 3.6% of RIA channel firms receive some form of commission-based compensation.

The heart of the RIA segment still lies in firms with $100 million to $1 billion in regulated AUM. In 2018, 7,064 of the reporting firms fell within that asset range, 56% of the total. The 147 firms with more than $100 billion in regulated AUM, 1.2% of the RIA segment, accounted for 59.2% of the total RIA assets.

The largest firms are also the fastest growing. Firms with under $1 billion in registered AUM experienced a 1.6% increase in the number of advisors and a 6.1% increase in AUM, and firms with $1 billion to $100 billion AUM experienced 7.3% advisor growth and 4.4% AUM growth—while the largest firms with more than $100 billion in AUM experienced 18.6% advisory growth and 27% AUM growth.

In 2018, there are a total of 805,623 non-clerical employees working at RIAs, an increase of 3.6% since 2017. Over half of these employees are offering investment advisory services.

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