Can You Take Your Clients When You Start Your Own RIA?

The short answer: Clients choose where their accounts go, and the new RIA's job is to make that choice clean. If the firm you are leaving is a member of the Protocol for Broker Recruiting, your new firm needs to join it too for the Protocol to cover the move, because the Protocol applies only when both firms are signatories; it then lets you take five items of client information for the clients you serviced and solicit them once you have joined the new firm. From there the new firm announces itself within the advertising rules, has every client sign a new advisory agreement, and moves accounts through ACATS. What your own employment agreement allows is a question for counsel.

Whether the book is yours in the first place is a separate question, answered channel by channel in do you actually own your book of business. This guide covers what the new firm itself has to do, in order. It sits inside the full launch sequence in how to start an RIA.

What the new firm does, step by step

Does the new RIA have to join the Broker Protocol?

The Protocol's own text sets the condition: its terms apply when advisors move from one firm to another "and both firms are signatories." A new RIA that wants the Protocol to cover the move therefore joins it before the move. The administrator's page sets out the process: complete and sign the Joinder Agreement, send it to the administrator, and submit the name, phone number and email address of the firm's Protocol contact. By signing, the firm agrees to be bound by the Protocol and to perform its obligations under it.

The administrator's page does not say how long a joinder takes to become effective. Kitces wrote in 2016 that a breakaway advisor's new RIA entity should join before the advisor leaves the existing firm. Any signatory may also withdraw at any time, with an effort to give ten days' written notice, so the membership of the firm you are leaving is worth checking close to the date. The Protocol for Broker Recruiting explained covers the agreement's history and its limits.

What the Protocol lets you take, and what the new firm does with it

Advisors may take only the client name, address, phone number, email address and account title of the clients they serviced, and are prohibited from taking any other documents or information. The resignation goes in writing to local branch management, with a copy of that information and the clients' account numbers. Where a team does not move together, the team agreement governs which clients each departing member may take, and the Protocol supplies default terms when there is no written agreement.

The new firm takes on an obligation of its own. The Protocol states that, to ensure compliance with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and SEC Regulation S-P, the new firm will limit use of the list to the departing advisor's solicitation of his or her former clients and will not permit any other advisor to use it. If a client wants the old firm to send account numbers or statements, the client signs an authorization, and the old firm forwards the information within one business day if possible and in any event within two.

Timing matters too. Under the Protocol, advisors may solicit clients they serviced only after they have joined the new firm, and the old firm remains free to enforce contractual, statutory or common law restrictions on solicitation before the advisor leaves.

What if the firm you are leaving is not a member?

Then the Protocol does not reach the move, whatever the new firm has signed. What you may take and whom you may contact are set by your agreement, any non-solicitation or notice terms, and the applicable law. That review belongs at the start of the launch plan, with counsel; can my firm sue me for leaving walks through the instruments firms use.

Announcing the new firm

For an SEC-registered RIA, the SEC marketing rule defines an advertisement to include any communication to more than one person that offers the adviser's advisory services. An announcement may not include an untrue statement of material fact, a material statement of fact the adviser cannot substantiate on demand, or benefits without fair and balanced treatment of material risks. Information in a required regulatory filing or notice is excluded. A state-registered firm follows its own state's advertising rules; in May 2026 NASAA's members adopted amendments to its model advertising rules that give states a framework closer to the federal standard.

New agreements, the brochure and Form CRS

Every client signs a new advisory agreement with the new firm. An SEC-registered firm delivers its Form ADV brochure before or at the time the client signs, a brochure supplement for each advisor who will serve the client, and, for retail investors, Form CRS by the same point. A state-registered firm checks its own state's delivery rules.

Moving the accounts

The Protocol's text puts it simply: a client who wants to transfer an account need only sign an ACAT form. Under FINRA Rule 11870, the receiving firm submits the client's instruction through ACATS, and the firm holding the account has one business day to validate it or take exception and three business days after validation to complete the transfer. FINRA Rule 2140 bars members from interfering with a customer's transfer request tied to a representative's change of employment, where the account carries no lien or other bona fide claim. How the whole client move paces out is covered in how long a financial advisor transition takes.

The rules are public; the sequencing around them is where launches go well or badly. Winthrop's RIA Search & Launch builds that sequence with you, and the RIA Launch Checklist puts the steps on paper. Request an introduction.