Who Loses Ground Under Merrill's 2027 Comp Plan?

The short answer: Merrill's 2027 plan leaves the payout grid alone, makes the growth award harder to earn, and ties most of its new award paths to lending and bank deposits. The advisors who lose ground are the ones whose practices cannot easily clear a bar raised by half or grow lending and deposits: mature books with steady assets, practices serving retirees who are drawing down, and advisors whose clients do not want to borrow or bank at Merrill. How much any one practice gives up depends on its book of business.

Merrill's plan for 2027 surfaced on October 22, when AdvisorHub reported its details. It is the third of the four wirehouse plans to arrive this fall. Morgan Stanley raised every revenue threshold on its core grid by 10%. UBS held its grid and put its new money into a retention program, which our read of UBS Pathways walks through. Wells Fargo had not yet published.

Merrill's 2027 plan at a glance

Figures as reported by AdvisorHub on October 22, 2026.

Who loses ground

Practices just over the old growth-award bar

The growth award is a cash bonus for advisors who clear its flow and household bars, and AdvisorHub's sources said most Merrill advisors earned it last year. Lifting the flow bar by half, from $5 million to $7.5 million, and adding a fourth household credit puts the award out of reach for practices that cleared the old line with little to spare.

Those tend to be mature practices: full books, older clients, and assets that hold steady more than they grow. A practice whose clients are drawing down in retirement can serve them well and still struggle to post $7.5 million of net new strategic flows in a year. The 2027 reporting does not say what the award pays, so what losing it costs depends on the practice.

Practices whose clients do not borrow or bank there

Two of the three new premium paths, and all of the new Lending Growth Award, pay on lending and bank deposits. An advisor whose clients carry securities-based loans, mortgages or large cash balances at the bank gains new ways to earn. An advisor serving retirees who have paid off their homes, or families who prefer to stay out of debt, gains far fewer, however well that practice is run.

The direction is consistent. The 2026 plan widened the banking growth award, and the 2027 plan adds lending and deposit premiums on top of it. Across the last two plans, more of the upside has followed the bank's products.

Advisors who wanted a raise in core pay

The payout grid has not moved since the 2023 plan. The new money in 2027 is conditional: it arrives through hurdles and premiums tied to flows, households, lending and deposits. For an advisor whose production is steady and whose clients need little more banking, the plan adds little that is new. When a firm does change its grid, the change shows up in the details more than in the headline rate.

Who gains

The plan rewards some practices more than before, and it is worth saying plainly. A team growing managed assets can add 50% to its growth award with $50 million of net new managed flows. A team with an active lending or banking business has two more paths to a premium, and the premiums stack. The old Elite Award needed $150 million of strategic flows, a different measure, and AdvisorHub's sources expect more advisors to reach at least one of the new premiums than reached the old Elite Award. The same reporting had about 90% of advisors on pace for their best year under the 2026 plan.

What to check in your own numbers before January

1. Your 2026 net strategic flows against $7.5 million. If this year's number would not clear the new bar, plan on the growth award being at risk in 2027.
2. Your net new household credits against four. One more household a year is a small ask for a growing practice and a real one for a full practice.
3. How much of your growth comes from lending and deposits. If little of it does, little of the new premium money will reach you.
4. What is deferred or restricted. Know what you would leave behind and when each piece vests. What an award, an agreement or a deferred-pay plan allows in your case is a question for your own attorney.

Reading these numbers the way a recruiter reads a grid turns a pay memo into a comparison.

What the alternative looks like

For the advisors who lose ground under the 2027 plan, the turn of the year is a natural time to price the alternative, and pricing it commits no one to anything. Merrill advisors were already moving: in the first half of 2026, 570 producing advisors left Merrill and 315 joined, and of the 454 who left and re-registered elsewhere, about three in ten went independent, according to The State of Financial Advisor Movement.

The options sort by kind of firm:

• Another wirehouse or a regional firm. In the deals we work on, wirehouse recruiting packages run closer to 400% of trailing-12 revenue, depending on your book of business, on notes that typically run 7 to 10 years and longer for the largest packages. Regional firms usually write packages of roughly 300% to 400%, with some paying more, depending on the practice.
• An independent broker-dealer. Pay follows the revenue the practice earns for clients. A headline payout can reach 95% and above and nets in the 80s after the broker-dealer's own charges, before the practice's overhead, with what the advisor keeps depending on the broker-dealer, the business mix and advisory size. Transition assistance runs 100% to 150% and above for the right teams, depending on your book of business.
• An independent RIA. The advisor keeps the advisory revenue, less platform and RIA costs. Clients who want to borrow can still do so through custodians and third-party securities-based lending, without the advisor's pay hanging on it.

The Merrill Lynch Knowledge Center carries where Merrill advisors have gone. Plenty of advisors run these numbers and stay, which is a legitimate answer.

Every number here depends on the advisor and the book. The specific answer comes from a confidential conversation: the best deal we can win for your practice through our relationships and our record of past deals, and how culture, technology, support and service compare at the firms that fit. Request an introduction.