Fidelity Investments’ M&A watchers have a message for current and potential registered investment advisor acquirers: the market has gotten even more competitive in 2025.
According to Fidelity’s half-year M&A transaction report on RIAs and broker/dealers, the number of buyers in the market has widened even beyond rates seen over the past five years, with “more players and fiercer competition.”
Fidelity reported that the number of unique buyers has ticked up steadily since the end of 2020, when there were 60 buyers as compared to a peak of 87 by the end of 2023. In the first half of this year, however, there are already 64 unique buyers, with the team expecting more to enter before the year’s end.
The takeaway from this quarter’s report is that the “appetite is alive and well, and the pool of buyers is widening,” said Laura Delaney McElroy, vice president of business consulting. “We may very well see more buyers this year than what the market yielded in 2023.”
Fidelity reported 16 new buyers in the market in 2025 to compete with existing acquirers. And they’re not just hunting in their backyards; they’re mostly acquiring in other states.
According to the researchers, more minority investors can help drive those new entrants. According to prior reporting, the model of investors providing capital without a controlling stake had once been somewhat rare, happening every quarter or so. Today, it has “become quite commonplace for minority investments to be announced each month,” Fidelity wrote. “We’re now pivoting our sights to firms who already are, or who are becoming serial minority investors.”
In its tracking, Fidelity counted those transactions as coming from: Elevation Point (4), Constellation Wealth Capital (3), Summit Growth Partners (3), Emigrant Partners (2), Wealth Partners Capital Group (2), HGGC (2) and Temak (2).
Whether new or veteran buyers, dealmakers have driven a record-setting flow through the first half as tracked by Fidelity.
In the first half, the Boston-based firm saw 132 transactions representing $182.7 billion in assets, the most active start since Fidelity began tracking M&A in 2015.
“Notably, RIA M&A in June 2025 yielded 18 transactions totaling $35.8B in purchased assets, representing a 6% increase in activity and 36% increase in purchased assets versus the prior month,” Fidelity wrote. “Five transactions exceeding $1B in size were announced in the first three business days of the month. Compared to June 2024’s 19 transactions and $41.3B in assets, this month landed in a strong and reliable summer spot.”
“The data points us to a competitive buy-side marketplace, and one way of looking at this is through the lens of the leading 20 strategic acquirer cohort,” Delaney said. “This cohort has raised their competitive activity floor, which was raised from three announced deals each last year to four. Now it’s four announced deals each and inching closer to five.”
Meanwhile, there has been some shuffling of the leaderboard. Among the top 20 acquirers from July 2024 through June 2025 by deal count, 14 firms remained from the comparable period through June 2024, meaning six firms muscled their way into the top group to start the year.
Those new players were: EP Wealth Advisors (10), CW Advisors/Osaic (9), Cerity Partners (8), Lido Advisors (6), Beacon Pointe Advisors (5) and Bluespring Wealth (4).
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