When banks raise fees and asset minimums, they send a clear message to advisors: your lower-balance clients are no longer valuable. That message is prompting some advisors to leave for registered investment advisors (RIAs), where they can serve a wider range of clients and own their books of business.
The View from a Former Bank Advisor
Justin Duke spent 11 years at BNY Wealth, where he watched policy changes price out all but high-net-worth clients from trust and estate services. Meanwhile, prospects with fewer investible assets were increasingly routed to centralized call-center-like offices, said Duke, now a managing director and client advisor in Dallas with RIA Simon Quick Advisors.
“There’s just a point in time in which the big banks want you to do more, more, more,” said Duke, whose 25-year career also includes stints at Northern Trust and Regions Bank. “The banks are changing; the clients aren’t.”
Contrast that with Simon Quick, the Morristown, New Jersey-based RIA he joined. The firm has $10 billion in assets under management, 91 employees — including 28 certified financial planners and seven certified public accountants — and offices in New York, Denver, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. More importantly, it places far fewer restraints on wealth managers working with mass-affluent clients.
“How attractive can that be without all of the noise and without all of the headache and the constraints of ‘Hey, I’ve got to leave my old clients behind,’” Duke said.
How Banks and Wirehouses Send an ‘Exit Signal’
Will Trout, director of securities and investments at Datos Insights, said complaints like Duke’s are fairly common. The fee hikes and rising asset minimums adopted by many banks send a simple message to advisors: “Your lower-balance clients aren’t valuable anymore.”
“For an advisor who built a book in the mass-affluent space, that’s an exit signal,” Trout said. “They can take those clients to an RIA, serve them better and actually own the relationship.”
Duke’s move from a large bank-based wealth advisor to an RIA aligns with longstanding industry trends. Research firm Cerulli Associates reported in February that RIAs managed 27% of all industry assets in 2024, up from 21% a decade earlier.
Meanwhile, from 2021 to 2025, RIAs built for working with retail investors gained 9,525 representatives registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, according to a report last year from data firm ISS Market Intelligence. Banks lost 2,121. It’s worth noting that a registered representative isn’t always someone who works with clients, manages assets, and has other advisory-related responsibilities. Many registered reps hold FINRA licenses but perform mostly back-office functions.
Still, ISS’s data corroborate advisors’ long-running tendency to shift away from banks, wirehouses, and other large institutions in favor of smaller RIAs and more independent firms. Simon Quick, for instance, was founded in 2004 and took its current name in 2017 following a merger with a family office founded to preserve the wealth of former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.
Why Advisors Leave: Fees, Minimums, and Book Ownership
Some who’ve left bank settings complain that banks rarely give advisors ownership stakes in the books of business they’ve helped build. Others grumble about regulatory pressures leading to fewer offerings for even high-net-worth investors. Then there are the higher fees and asset minimums for clients wanting certain services.
“Is repricing the only reason advisors leave? No,” Trout said. “But combined with the lack of book ownership at banks, it’s become a concrete grievance that accelerates departures.”
Duke said he was attracted to Simon Quick and the RIA model in general by the lack of business pressures common at many larger firms. “You get to a point where enough is enough, and then you hear this refreshing story,” Duke said.
The RIA Advantage: Private Ownership and Long-Term Relationships
Managing Partner Chris Moore said Simon Quick’s status as a privately held, employee-owned firm shields it from the relentless push for better profits that can be found at publicly traded banks and similar firms. Because RIAs don’t have to defend their margins to shareholders every quarter, they have more leeway to take on clients whose asset tallies won’t necessarily lead to big payouts.
“But, you know, maybe it’s a great relationship for us over the long term that’s going to grow, and they have a lot of planning opportunities, and it’s strategic,” Moore said. “Maybe they’re going to be a big referral source.”
Banks are notorious for putting up legal obstacles to keep their former advisors from moving clients to new firms. Moore said there’s no expectation that Duke will move a certain percentage of his old book of business. Duke could very well spend most of his time working with clients he finds on his own or obtains through referrals from Simon Quick.
“As a growing organization, if we continue to see growth from our organic channels, we frequently are assigning those relationships to advisors that come on,” Moore said. “That could very well happen here too.”
Matching Advisors to the RIA Model
Simon Quick’s openness to accepting different types of clients has enabled it to recruit advisors from firms as diverse as Merrill, Northern Trust, and BNY. Moore said the firm usually is the most natural fit for advisors who don’t make a large part of their revenue from commissions stemming from sales of annuities and similar products.
As an RIA with no broker-dealer affiliation, Simon Quick offers its services for fees meant to encourage ongoing planning relationships rather than one-off sales. That, too, gives someone like Duke greater leeway to select clients with an eye toward the long term rather than immediate profits.
“He can really go out and attract the clients he wants to attract and not have to turn down some that he thought would be perfect clients but couldn’t fit in with other organizations,” Moore said.
Moore said the firm now has six employees in Dallas and is planning to open an office there soon. The Dallas metropolitan area is particularly appealing because of its high concentration of entrepreneurs and residents looking to hand down wealth to heirs.
Simon Quick has achieved growth not only through recruiting but also acquisition deals. Last year, for instance, it bought Proquility, an RIA with nearly $400 million under management. Unlike many firms that pursue acquisitions, Simon Quick isn’t obtaining financing for its deals from private equity. Rather, Moore said, it’s relying on its cash flows, as well as debt when needed.
“Simon Quick’s goal is to double as an organization every five years,” Moore said. “And that’s doing that thoughtfully and sticking to our vision and our mission and our core values.”