The giddy economic environment has also spurred healthy M&A activity, but even though 67% of the respondents expect the merger pace to pick up among RIAs in general in 2020, only 10% of those polled said they were interested in selling their own firms in the next two years (even as 45% said they were indeed approached by an acquirer last year). Oligino ascribes that lack of interest to the relative youth of the respondents—the average age in this survey was 57, she says, which means those polled are still building foundations and are ambitious about their own firms and growth plans.
“When you talk to advisors who are 57, retirement is not on their radar,” she says. “I don’t think that they are worried about ‘Am I going to get more this year than next year’ [by selling a firm.]” Because that transition, she says, is something they won't be thinking about for decades.