The financial advice industry was founded to serve high-net-worth individuals and families—and many advisors have said they would prefer to spend more time serving their best and most profitable clients—but most RIAs are not operating that way, according to a new survey.

Nearly two-thirds of RIAs either do not enforce client account minimums or forego establishing account minimums altogether, according to the 2019 RIA Capacity and Segmentation Survey, a poll of more than 360 North American advisors sponsored by Facet Wealth.

Forty-four percent of respondents said that they do not enforce their firm’s minimums, and another 17 percent reported not having minimums at all.

Advisors are spending 10 percent to 20 percent of their time on unprofitable accounts, according to the survey.

As it turns out, profit may not be the biggest motivator for financial advisors, said Lisa Rapuano, chief financial officer of Facet Wealth.

“At the end of the day, advisors want to do right by their clients, and some who might not be considered ‘ideal’ from a business growth perspective may also be among their earliest and most steadfast relationships,” Rapuano said in released comments. “As our industry trends toward professionalization, a majority of advisors are reluctant to let these clients go or relegate them to inferior tiers of service, even as the same advisors face flat-lining growth and loss of their time.”

Most advisors lack a formal process for segmenting their clientele and weeding out the ones who do not have sufficient assets, as 52 percent said that they do not segment clients and transition out the ones who fail to meet their minimums, according to the survey.

Yet advisors are also feeling constrained by the number of clients they need to retain to remain profitable. More than half of the survey’s respondents reported serving more than 75 clients per advisor. At the same time, 45 percent of the respondents said that time constraints are their biggest pain point, while 42 percent cited growing their book of business.

CanAm Research conducted the poll earlier this year.