The Tiebreaker for Advisors Choosing a New Firm

Last year, 11,172 financial advisors changed firms.

Diamond Consultants' annual transition report puts that number in context: it's a 16% jump over the prior three-year average. More striking is who was moving. The average advisor who changed firms in 2025 had 22 years of experience. These were seasoned professionals with established practices, long client relationships, and every reason to stay put — until they didn't.

Something is shifting in this industry. The movement is real and it's accelerating.

What I find more interesting than the numbers is what actually happens inside a transition decision. I've walked alongside enough advisors through this process to know the story the data can't tell.

Most transitions start the same way. An advisor begins exploring quietly — a conference conversation, a few phone calls, a name passed along by a colleague. They build a comparison. Payout grids, technology platforms, practice management support, custodial relationships. They run the numbers, read the transition assistance fine print, and do what advisors are trained to do: analyze.

Eventually they reach a short list. Three firms, maybe four. All of them check the boxes. All of them can logistically support how the advisor runs their practice.

And then the spreadsheet stops deciding.

At that point, the advisor starts noticing something different. How did that regional director make me feel on the call? Did the back office actually solve my problem, or just transfer me to someone else? When I visited the home office, did leadership seem genuinely curious about my business?

They're reading the room — which is something their analytical training never quite prepared them for.

I've been in this industry long enough to keep my own running ledger.

Years of conversations with advisors across dozens of firms — large platforms, boutique RIAs, independents with 30,000 advisors and firms with 80 — have given me a feel for what advisors actually experience day to day, not just what firms promise in their recruiting decks. I've heard how back office calls go when something breaks. I've heard how leadership responds when advisors say what they need. Over time, a picture develops. Some firms keep earning loyalty. Others keep losing advisors. And the variable that explains it almost never turns out to be size.

Some of the most advisor-centric cultures I've encountered belong to firms most people haven't heard of. Some of the most tone-deaf belong to household names.

The firms that keep showing up on the right side of the transition data have something in common. Their culture is built on genuine hospitality — and I mean that precisely, not casually.

Hospitality at the organizational level shows up in specifics. Someone in the back office takes ownership of a problem instead of explaining which department it actually belongs to. A transition team stays engaged after the paperwork is signed. Leadership asks what advisors need to grow their business, then builds it. The calls go differently. The follow-through is different. The whole texture of working with the firm is different.

Firms that have built hospitality into their DNA — into how they hire, train, and respond — aren't hard to recognize once you've seen enough of both kinds.

There's a moment in almost every transition process I've been part of where the advisor stops talking about features and starts asking a different question. They may not say it this plainly, but what they're really asking is: who actually wants to help me thrive?

The firms with a genuine answer to that question are winning the transition market. The ones leading with brochure language are losing advisors to them.

I've been watching both.

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Shaun Morgan is the founder of Morgan Advisor Consulting, a boutique transition consulting firm, and Shaun Morgan Coaching, where he helps financial advisors and business leaders build hospitality-driven cultures and client experiences.