I spent most of my career on the other side of this scenario, founding an RIA, sitting in the principal’s chair, living with whatever the custodian shipped. So, when I say the custody model is quietly taxing growth, I’m not reading it off a slide. I felt it. And the data now says most other firms feel it too.
Custodial satisfaction is going down, not up. According to F2 Strategy, RIA satisfaction with their custodial relationships slipped to 3.4 out of 5 in 2025, down from 3.6 in 2023. The frustration is deepening as the platforms mature. Fewer than half of firms are satisfied with their custodian’s native data tools.
Most firms are running more than one custodian. Roughly 67% are multi-custodian, according to F2 Strategy. And 71% of advisors cite a lack of integration between tools as a top technology challenge, according to Cerulli. Every additional relationship adds another layer of human middleware. Another system to reconcile, where data gets stitched together by hand. Reconciliation is a daily tax.
Onboarding is still the single biggest source of friction. F2 Strategy also found that 72% of firms said so. Multiple handoffs. Ticket-based workflows. No real-time view of where a new account actually stands.
None of this is a knock on the firms living it. By every other measure they’re winning — AUM up, strong client relationships and hiring well. The friction shows up anyway because their infrastructure wasn’t built for where they’re headed.
The Pain Has Finally Drawn A Crowd.
Wells Fargo is building a fee-only RIA custody platform for its own advisors and opening it to outside firms in 2027. State Street, five years post-exit, has hired Altruist and Apex veterans to build a digitally native platform and re-enter the space. Altruist keeps closing the product gap with the incumbents, and now tops the custodial category in the T3 survey on user satisfaction. Robinhood is building its own RIA custody stack behind TradePMR. Goldman keeps deepening its RIA footprint through the aggregators.
That’s one signal, not five announcements. Serious players don’t pour capital into a market unless they believe the incumbents are beatable. The pain has reached a tipping point, and the contenders know it.
A Better Feed Is Still A Feed.
Here’s what the contenders won’t tell you. A modern data story is still a data story. Another schema. Another API. Another feed shaped its own way.
Five clean feeds that don’t communicate don’t add up to one clean record, but five reconciliation jobs.
For a firm starting clean on one custodian, that’s progress. For the two-thirds running more than one custodian, it’s one more thing to reconcile. Five clean feeds that don’t communicate don’t add up to one clean record, but five reconciliation jobs. No custodian solves that, and it isn’t a failing on their part. Each one can deliver its own feed. None can see the other four. Connecting them into a single record was never the custodian’s job to do, which means it’s the firm’s.
Different Is Better Than Better.
Most of the field is racing to be a better custodian. Faster, cheaper, friendlier than the incumbents. A worthy race, but the wrong one for a firm thinking 10 years out. The question isn’t which custodian is marginally better. It’s what the operating model underneath custody should look like because connected data is what matters.
That’s the part most firms tend to skip. A faster feed makes a good quarter. A connected operating model is what shows up in the multiple when a firm is valued. There’s a difference between a practice that runs on one person’s memory and an enterprise that runs on unified architecture. The question worth bringing to any custody conversation isn’t whose feed is cleanest. It’s what foundation the firm should build on.
Where This Goes Next.
When F2 Strategy asked what would reshape custody, 66% of firms named AI as the biggest disruptor ahead, well clear of anything else. They are right about the force. The open question is what does the AI actually run on?
The custodians are right to ship AI, and the tools are good. They’re also pointed at the wrong altitude. A custodian’s AI only sees that custodian’s feed, so it answers questions about one slice of a firm that also runs on four others. That’s a point solution, useful inside its lane and blind to everything outside it.
AI only acts on what it can see.
AI only acts on what it can see. Point it at five custodial feeds stitched together by hand and it returns confident answers that are actually guesses. Point it at one unified record and AI can do the work, provide faster onboarding and cleaner reviews as it presents a client experience that doesn’t stall at the next reconciliation. The custodians racing to ship AI are right that it changes the curve. What decides whether it helps or hurts is the data foundation underneath, and that should be settled long before the next model shows up.
The Custody Command Layer, and the thinking behind it, is detailed at https://amplifyplatform.com/amplify-ccl-launch.
Jack Martin is the Chief Marketing Officer of Amplify Platform and a former RIA founder and securities principal.
This article is published under WSR’s partner program and was not written by WSR’s staff or editors. For more information on how to participate in the partner program, contact zack.drew@wealthsolutionsreport.com. Views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of WSR.
