Mega-RIAs Will Grow to Rival Wirehouses in Next Decade: Mariner's Bicknell

The number of RIAs has grown rapidly in the past several years, but none has become as vast as a sprawling wirehouse. Not yet.

Marty Bicknell offers an authoritative prediction.

“In five to 10 years, there will be a handful of truly large independent RIAs that can rival the size of the wirehouses,” Bicknell, CEO and president of Mariner Wealth Advisors, tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview.

It’s a good bet that Mariner, fourth on Barron’s list of top RIAs, could be one of those.

The Overland Park, Kansas-based firm, founded in 2006, has grown at a fast clip — it has 110 locations nationwide and now advises on a total of $230 billion in assets. Its 1,800 financial advisors include employees and independent contractors. 

Inorganic growth has been a significant key to its success. To date, Mariner has made 55 acquisitions, the most recent of which, a combination of institutional consultants AndCo Consultants and Fourth Street Performance Partners, closed in April. The deal kicked off the firm’s Mariner Institutional brand and brought in $104 billion in assets under advisement.

Other brands include Mariner Ultra, for ultra-high-net-worth clients, and Mariner Workplace, for business owners.

Bicknell argues that it’s critical for advisors to offer a variety of additional services, and Mariner itself has 125 tax professionals preparing clients’ income tax returns. 

“We have all the bases covered,” Bicknell says.

In the interview, Bicknell, who spent 16 years with A.G. Edwards before founding Mariner, also talks about the challenge of working with ultra-high-net-worth clients and closely held family businesses.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What has been Mariner’s chief way of growing?

MARTY BICKNELL: We grow organically, but we also grow through acquisitions.

Are you making more of a push to step up inorganic growth?

It’s a continuing effort. We made our first acquisition in 2012 and have done 55 in total. The last one [closed] in April 2024.

We’ll be announcing another one at the end of July or in early August.

What are the biggest challenges for RIA firms today?

The main challenge for most firms is talent: advisors, non-advisors, leadership.

There are more firms in the registered investment advisory space that are growing, but [the field] is very fragmented. Most firms are at $1 billion or smaller.

The average firms that are growing are having trouble growing beyond the founders and bringing other leadership into the organization.

To what extent does Mariner have an active recruiting program?

We have a recruiting team that’s fully dedicated to advisor recruiting and another team that’s dedicated to non-advisors.

What differentiates Mariner from other top RIAs?

We have some of the most talented advisors in the industry.

Our organic growth is a differentiator, and it helps attract advisors to the firm. As they grow, we can provide more opportunities for them to serve more and more clients. 

Our expanded services is one of our differentiators. Advisors are coming to us because of them. We have all the bases covered.

We call our advisors “advisors to our advisors.” If an advisor needs help taking a client through the sale of a company or estate planning, for example, they can advise them on how to best serve the client.

What’s a significant reason for an advisor joining your firm rather than a wirehouse?

The main reason is our ability to have services in-house that surround them in order to elevate their value proposition and the client experience.

Tell me about your firm’s breadth of services.

We’re expanding from just investments into tax services, trust services, insurance and others. 

Demand from clients is driving many firms to add services. It’s a great opportunity to differentiate themselves.