RIA Pulse Platform Update: September 2025

Since its launch a month ago, RIA Pulse has undergone numerous changes in response to the tremendous support and feedback from its growing user base. The platform has received almost daily updates to add features and address user feedback. This post summarizes the key changes and sets expectations for the future.

Benchmark and Ranking Exclusions

When RIA Pulse first launched, we had a few simple exclusion rules in place. Simply put, any firm that had filed Form ADV less than 15 months prior to the current period, had values in key fields (total aum, advisor count, employee count, total clients, total accounts) and did not hit our 1.5xIQR outlier detection rules were included in our benchmarks and rankings.

These initial exclusion rules did not account for how firms that exist outside the traditional wealth management and financial planning model can skew the numbers. To address this, we added a few more exclusion rules by requiring that firms have a minimum of 20 clients and 20 accounts and that they have a minimum of 10% of their AUM from individual and high-net-worth individuals clients.

These changes improved the quality of the rankings and benchmarks for traditional wealth management and financial planning firms but also excluded some boutique hybrid firms that were previously included. After reviewing the data, the minimum client and account count has been reduced to 10. This change brings back some of the boutique hybrid firms that were previously excluded.

The current performance methodology will remain in place from now until the end of 2025 to ensure consistency for the growing number of users citing RIA Pulse data in their research and publications.

AI Firm Analysis (Experimental)

An experimental AI firm analysis feature has been added to the platform. This feature uses RIA Pulse data, including historical ADV data, performance metrics and benchmarks, combined with web-search enabled AI to generate a comprehensive analysis of the firm. To control costs, a new analysis is generated only when new ADV data is available. This limitation will likely be lifted in the future.

Advanced Filtering (Experimental)

An experimental advanced filtering feature has been added to the platform. This feature is available on the Firms search page and allows users to filter based on any ADV form field on the platform. Due to the large number of fields and possible combinations of filters, not all possible combinations have been thoroughly tested. Therefore, this feature is currently in an experimental state and users may encounter unexpected behavior.

Custodian Information

A common request from users was to include custodian data in the platform. Custodians are now included based on Form ADV Schedule D Section 5.K.(3). These custodians are included as a semicolon delimited list in csv exports, a common format for CRM upload into multi-picklist fields.