Advisor movement “accelerated” significantly last year as 11,172 advisors with over three years of service changed firms or platforms, a 16.2% increase from 2024, Diamond Consultants said Tuesday, while announcing the findings of its fourth annual Advisor Transition Report.
“By any standard, that’s an astonishingly high number,” Jason Diamond, President of Diamond Consultants, said in the report’s introduction and executive summary.
“Even without additional details about the size or quality of those advisors, consider what that signifies: Over 11,000 unique advisors left their current firm during a historic bull market and took a leap of faith, hoping their clients would follow them to a new firm or platform,” he said.
Long-tenured advisors moved most often, the report said, pointing out that, of the 11,172 experienced advisors who changed firms or models in 2025, the average length of service in the industry was 22 years.
Also significant, the report said: “Sunset deals are here to stay. And they are becoming more lucrative, more aggressive, and more restrictive. Some firms are rolling out ‘premier’ or ‘enhanced’ versions of their retire-in-place sunset deals 10 or 20 years before an advisor’s target retirement date. They are, essentially, trying to lock advisors up for life and remove all future optionality.”
Also, the report found that large advisor team movement continued, as 54 teams with over $1 billion in assets transitioned in 2025, including 29 from wirehouses.
Wirehouse advisors also continued to move to W-2 models, including other wirehouse and regional/boutique firms, “as these firms fight to attract top talent with a compelling mix of economics and platform capabilities,” Diamond Consultants said.
Also among the report’s key findings, independence continued its momentum last year, particularly among larger advisor teams that wanted more ownership, flexibility and control.
Meanwhile, supportive independence models have become significant, the firm said, noting they appeal to advisors seeking more autonomy and ownership while continuing to receive access to capital, infrastructure and strategic support.
Another key finding of the report was a focus on enterprise value as more advisors prioritize equity ownership, monetization strategies and long-term scalability.
In a podcast discussing the report’s findings, Louis Diamond, the consultancy’s CEO, said, “My viewpoint is if sunset deals weren’t a thing, the 11,000-plus advisors that moved in 2025 is probably more like 20,000. Complete conjecture because we'll never really know. But the sunset deals at any firm, whether a wire or regional, an independent firm, are by far a landslide, the most successful retention tools that these firms have at their disposal.”
He added, “The fact that they can lock up a retiring advisor really in perpetuity and then lock up their team, whether it’s one advisor or 10 advisors, for anywhere from five to seven years, sometimes even longer, sometimes a bit shorter too, is an amazing retention tool. And also why we get asked all the time, ‘Is X, Y, Z firm going to pay retention?’ Our answer is, ‘they don’t need to because they have these sunset deals.’”
Jeff Berman, Contributing Editor and Reporter at Wealth Solutions Report, can be reached at jeff.berman@wealthsolutionsreport.com.
