{"id":956330,"date":"2026-05-13T05:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956330\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T05:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:05:15","slug":"cresset-ceo-says-ria-talent-shortage-may-be-in-adjacent-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/956330\/","title":{"rendered":"Cresset CEO Says RIA Talent Shortage May Be In Adjacent Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CEO of one of the country\u2019s largest registered investment advisors said on a panel Tuesday that the talent shortage to watch in wealth management is among those providing adjacent wealth services, such as taxes and accounting, to a growing pool of upper-high-net-worth clients<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us have probably seen the McKinsey study saying that there is going to be a shortage of 100,000 advisors<\/a>,\u201d said Cresset Capital CEO Susie Cranston. \u201cBut if you look at the graduation rates of accounting schools, if you look at the number of people passing the CPA exams, those numbers have dropped by as much as 50%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cranston made the comments during a press briefing with other RIA leaders from Hightower, New Edge Capital and Dynasty Financial Partners, hosted by Goldman Sachs at its annual RIA Professional Investor Forum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Figures from the American Institute of CPAs do show a years-long decline<\/a> in the number of accounting graduates with both bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees, which has been coupled with a roughly decades-long trend of fewer people getting CPAs. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Related:$1.2B Team Leaves Raymond James to Launch With RIA Concurrent<\/a><\/p>\n

Cranston, who oversees a $237 billion RIA with roots as a family office<\/a>, added that advancements in artificial intelligence have also started to erode the professional \u201ctraining grounds\u201d for tax and accounting professionals that might have been hired by a family office. But she doesn\u2019t see those types of entry-level roles displacing the need for humans to work with UNHW families with assets that can be in the $100 million range.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with all the talk that AI is going to remove all the jobs … I think that\u2019s very unlikely in the ultra-high-net-worth space,\u201d Cranston said. \u201cI think you\u2019re going to see a shortage of qualified, experienced talent, and I think that\u2019s going to give scaled players an advantage because you\u2019re going to really have to start thinking about how to cultivate that talent as the demand for family offices is really skyrocketing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other RIA leaders agreed that the need to serve higher-net-worth families across generations is growing in the U.S.\u2014a trend borne out in recent months, with several RIAs announcing dedicated family office divisions<\/a> or acquiring family office firms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hightower CEO Larry Restieri said the need for more complex wealth services may also ultimately puncture the storyline<\/a> that AI can replace human advisors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, AI will commoditize what has historically been a value add for the wealth management business,\u201d Restieri said. \u201cWhat clients are actually paying for is not so much the investment returns, but the actual advisor\u2014the EQ of the advisor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:Lido Advisors Acquires $1B Jackson Hole Capital<\/a><\/p>\n

He added that the best advisors may even become more expensive as AI advances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can make an argument that the price of advice for the best advisors may go up, because while they can cover more clients, they still have a limited ultimate capacity,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the same way that the best concierge doctors can charge the most because they are the best out there, and they have a limited number of spots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dynasty CEO Shirl Penney also sought to flip a common storyline in the financial advisor press on its head.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He told the audience of financial journalists that while there is plenty of reporting on advisors breaking away from wirehouses to go to independent channels, there is little talk of the \u201cclient breakaways\u201d to those channels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe breakaway client movement is four times bigger than the breakaway advisor movement,\u201d Penney said.<\/p>\n

The head of one of the country\u2019s largest RIA platforms argued that last year, about $400 billion in assets moved from bank brokerage accounts to the independent space, with only about $100 billion coming via breakaway advisors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe much bigger growth came from organic growth on the installed base of RIAs from breakaway clients,\u201d Penney said. \u201cIt has always surprised me that the press hasn\u2019t talked more about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:Edelman Claims Prime Capital Advisors Solicited Clients Despite Court Order<\/a><\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs\u2019 third RIA forum event had panel topics based on some of the most recent headlines in the financial press, according to moderator Troy Thornton, co-head of the Americas third-party wealth business. Those topics included discussions about global market volatility, AI disrupting wealth management and private credit default risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Numerous panelists, however, pushed back on those very headlines during discussions, particularly regarding concerns over private credit.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Rosner, head of multi-sector investing for Goldman Sachs, told the RIA audience that private credit has underlying stability<\/a> and nothing she sees that is \u201cparticularly concerning.\u201d Even in software exposure, where markets had particular concern due to AI advancements, she noted those investments did not affect the entire asset class.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about sizing and diversification,\u201d she said. \u201cShould private credit be 100% of a portfolio? Probably not, but nor should equities. … I think it comes back to how big of a sleeve is it and understanding that it is a less liquid asset class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs President and COO Jon Waldron acknowledged in a separate discussion that the firm is receiving questions from CIOs about private assets, particularly private credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMost CIOs in the last 10 years have been allocating more into private assets,\u201d Waldron said. \u201cNow there is a debate about whether I have too much private, illiquid risk for my portfolios.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The CEO of one of the country\u2019s largest registered investment advisors said on a panel Tuesday that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,2499,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-956330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116565529477333826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}