Q2 2026 Wealth Management Earnings: Every Major Franchise Grew Double Digits

The short answer: nine of the largest wealth franchises in America have now reported the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and every single one grew wealth revenue by double digits. Morgan Stanley crossed $10 trillion in client assets at a 30.5% pre-tax margin. Schwab gathered $120 billion in core net new assets. Raymond James set records across the board and kept recruiting at a historic pace. The margins say advisory revenue is the most durable earnings stream in American finance, and the recruiting commentary on the calls says every platform knows exactly where that revenue comes from.

Earnings season in wealth management is closing with a pattern so uniform it reads like a thesis. Across the wirehouses, the banks, the custodian, and the independents, revenue grew by double digits, margins widened, and client assets set records. One quarter is a data point. This quarter is a statement about where the economics of American financial services now sit. Here is what each firm reported, in the words of the people who ran the calls.

The wirehouses and the banks

Morgan Stanley, reporting July 15, put up the quarter's landmark numbers: record wealth management revenue of $8.9 billion, up 14%, at a 30.5% pre-tax margin. CFO Sharon Yeshaya delivered the milestone line on the call: "Across Wealth and Investment Management, total client assets stand at $10 trillion, fulfilling a Morgan Stanley strategic milestone." Wealth management alone holds $8 trillion of that. The division's record $148 billion in net new assets deserves its footnote, and Yeshaya supplied it herself: "Wealth Management added a record $148 billion in organic net new assets, driven by large IPOs of late-stage private workplace clients." The asset-gathering machine, in other words, ran substantially through the workplace channel this quarter, not through traditional recruiting. Chairman and CEO Ted Pick kept the credit where it belongs: "Our financial advisors, our culture of continued innovation, our ability to provide unique capabilities and products are the foundation."

Bank of America's Global Wealth and Investment Management segment, which houses Merrill and the Private Bank, reported July 14. CFO Alastair Borthwick ran the numbers: "Net income for the segment increased 42% year-over-year to $1.4 billion, while revenue grew 16% to a record $6.9 billion." Client balances reached a record $4.9 trillion, and CEO Brian Moynihan highlighted the household engine: "During the quarter, we added another 6,000 net new affluent households to serve." Merrill on its own posted record revenue of $5.7 billion, up 16%, on $4.1 trillion in client balances.

Wells Fargo, also July 14, grew Wealth and Investment Management revenue 13% to $3.9 billion. CEO Charlie Scharf framed the segment plainly: "Wealth and Investment Management client assets grew 15% from a year ago to over $2.4 trillion, driven by increased market valuations and also benefiting from 4 consecutive quarters of positive net flows." The firm also pointed to a $1 billion multi-year technology modernization and the second-quarter launch of Advisor Gateway, its new advisor desktop with generative AI capabilities, as direct contributors to hiring and retention.

JPMorgan's Asset and Wealth Management segment grew net revenue 19% to $6.9 billion inside a firmwide quarter in which, per Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, revenue in every line of business hit a new record. CFO Jeremy Barnum gave the asset picture: "AUM of $5.1 trillion was up 18% year-on-year, and client assets of $7.7 trillion were up 19% year-on-year, driven by higher market levels and continued net inflows." Dimon reserved a line for the consumer wealth side: "In wealth management, first-time investors of nearly 44,000 set a new record."

Goldman Sachs grew its Asset and Wealth Management segment 20% to $4.6 billion, and Chairman and CEO David Solomon marked two records at once: "Our wealth management client assets reached a record of roughly 2 trillion, and our total assets under supervision surpassed a record 4 trillion." The firm logged $19 billion of wealth management net inflows inside its 34th consecutive quarter of long-term inflows.

Citigroup's Wealth division, the business Andy Sieg was brought in to rebuild, grew revenue 13% to $3.2 billion with net income up 51% to $583 million at a 23% pre-tax margin. Chair and CEO Jane Fraser counted the streak on the call: "Wealth revenues increased for the 9th straight quarter, up 13%, with growth across all 3 businesses." Asked about the trajectory, she described the wealth strategy as "firing on all cylinders." Nearly two-thirds of the division's net new investment asset growth came from deepening existing client relationships, and referrals from the retail bank to Citigold rose 23%.

The independents told the same story

Charles Schwab, reporting July 21, posted record revenue of $7.1 billion, up 21%, with adjusted earnings per share of $1.62, up 42%. President and CEO Rick Wurster summarized the gathering: "We're attracting new clients and assets with 1.4 million new brokerage accounts and 120 billion in core net new assets, up nearly 50% over last year." Total client assets stood at $13.1 trillion. The number that matters most for the advisor industry sat one table lower: Advisor Services, Schwab's RIA custody unit, gathered $80.2 billion in net new assets in the quarter, up 89% year over year, on client assets of $5.7 trillion. Wurster did not hedge the read: "As independence continues to win and RIAs thrive, we're the natural leader in the advisor space."

Raymond James reported its fiscal third quarter July 22: record net revenues of $3.93 billion, up 16%, with net income available to common shareholders of $595 million and records through nine months for net revenues, pre-tax income, net income, and earnings per share. The Private Client Group posted record quarterly revenue of $2.84 billion on a record $1.86 trillion of client assets, and domestic net new assets of $21.7 billion rose 86% year over year. It was another quarter in a long pattern of consistent, disciplined growth from the St. Petersburg firm, and CEO Paul Shoukry attributed it to something older than the quarter: a culture built on putting people first and earning trust over generations, anchored by fee-based assets that reached a record $1.15 trillion.

Ameriprise closed the reported set on July 23 with the kind of quarter that has become its signature: adjusted operating EPS up 22%, record firmwide assets of $1.8 trillion, and Advice and Wealth Management revenue up 16% to $3.2 billion at a 28.9% margin. Adjusted operating net revenue per advisor reached a new high of $1.2 million, up 12%, and the firm added 79 experienced advisors in the quarter. Chairman and CEO Jim Cracchiolo's framing: "Ameriprise again delivered strong growth and excellent financial performance, including a record level of firm-wide assets. The consistency of our results reflects the strength of our diversified business and disciplined execution."

Cracchiolo also said the most quotable thing anyone said about recruiting all season, and it was a criticism. Asked about deal economics on the July call, he noted that some recruiting packages now carry paybacks as long as eight years, and called that unsustainable. It is worth sitting with who said it. This is not a competitor sniping from outside the bidding; it is the chairman of a firm that added 79 experienced advisors in the same quarter, arguing that the instruments being used to buy advisor movement have stretched past the point of sense. Set that against Wells Fargo's "we do not overpay," Merrill's refusal to grow through external recruiting, and the 550% of trailing-twelve package UBS extended to roughly $7 million-plus producers against a sixteen-year commitment, and the shape of the disagreement is clear: the industry cannot agree on what an advisor is worth, and the spread between those answers is where advisor movement is actually happening.

What the margins are saying

The single most important number of the stretch was not a revenue figure. It was Morgan Stanley's 30.5% pre-tax margin, and it did not stand alone: Bank of America's wealth segment ran above 27%, Ameriprise's wealth segment ran 28.9%, and Citi's rebuilt division reached 23% and climbing.

A margin like that on a wealth division is a statement about the durability of advisory revenue. Market cycles move trading and banking results around violently. Advisory relationships, by contrast, produce fee income that compounds with markets and persists through them. That is why every diversified firm on this list has spent a decade tilting toward wealth, and why the segment now carries valuations across the industry.

For the firms, the implication is straightforward: keep investing in the channel. For advisors, the implication deserves more attention than it usually gets. Every dollar of that margin begins with an advisor and a client. The platforms report the results, but the relationships produce them. When a division earns thirty cents of pre-tax profit on every revenue dollar, the economic question for the producing advisor is what share of the value created comes back to the person who created it, in current compensation and, more importantly, in owned enterprise value.

That is not an argument against any platform. Different structures serve different practices, and the recruiting numbers across this quarter show advisors actively choosing across the full landscape. It is an argument for knowing your own economics as precisely as your firm knows theirs.

What did the recruiting commentary reveal?

Put the calls side by side and the strategic split in the advisor market is on the record, in the principals' own words.

Wells Fargo was the most direct. Asked about advisor hiring, CFO Mike Santomassimo drew the line: "We are very disciplined about our approach to that. We do not overpay." He then made clear the discipline is not costing them growth, citing "close to, if not record recruiting in terms of the amount of business they bring" over the last three quarters, alongside attrition at a record low. Wells is betting that platform investment, not deal escalation, wins the advisor.

Merrill articulated the opposite end of the build-versus-buy spectrum. Co-head Eric Schimpf told reporters on the firm's media call: "You're not going to grow your advisor force at scale through external recruiting." Merrill is leaning on a training program with roughly 2,400 enrolled and a 75% graduation rate, even as co-head Lindsay Hans described the experienced-hire pipeline as the strongest the firm has seen. Moynihan put the corporate version on the investor call: "Both Merrill and the Private Bank continue to attract talented advisors who are drawn to the breadth of our platform."

Raymond James simply reported the scoreboard. Shoukry on the call: "Through the first nine months of the fiscal year, we recruited advisors with trailing 12-month production totaling $393 million and more than $56 billion of client assets at their previous firms." Recruiting and retention spending in the Private Client Group rose 21% in the quarter, and Shoukry paired the numbers with the firm's standing argument: "There's very few firms in the industry that treat advisors like clients anymore. We're one of those firms."

Ameriprise added 79 experienced advisors while pushing revenue per advisor to a record $1.2 million, the quiet compounding version of the same story.

Three postures, one market: pay carefully and invest in platform, build from within, or recruit on culture and count the production as it arrives. Record profits fund all three. The half's movement data shows how advisors are answering, and it is measured advisor by advisor in our H1 2026 key findings.

The flows tell the second story

Beneath the earnings, the asset flows sketched the competitive map. Schwab's $80.2 billion Advisor Services quarter, up 89%, is the cleanest single measure of the RIA channel's gravitational pull, and Wurster's stated plan to convert a meaningful share of Schwab's self-directed clients into its own advisory offerings shows the custodian intends to compete for advice revenue directly. Morgan Stanley's record flows leaned heavily on workplace and stock-plan channels, a reminder that the largest firms are building asset-gathering machines that do not depend on traditional recruiting. Citi is growing by mining its own bank. Goldman is converting founders it takes public; Solomon counted nearly 900 referrals from investment banking to wealth management since the start of 2025.

Record profits and record movement in the same half are not a contradiction. They are the same phenomenon seen from two sides. The more valuable the advisory relationship becomes, the harder every platform works to attract and retain the people who hold those relationships, and the more carefully those people weigh where their enterprise builds the most value.

The close: UBS reported July 29, LPL on July 30

The two firms at the center of the half's movement story reported last, and both are now in. The season is complete.

UBS reported second quarter results on the morning of Wednesday, July 29, and stayed on the double-digit script: net profit of $2.8B, reported revenues of $13.7B, up 13%, Global Wealth Management pre-tax profit of $2.0B, up 38%, on $36B of net new assets, and group invested assets at a record $7.3T. On the call, CFO Todd Tuckner was asked directly about US advisor exits and said the firm expects those dynamics to normalize over the course of 2026. We published a full analysis reading the earnings against the half's $28B departure tally: UBS Q2 2026: record earnings, $28B in advisor departures, and the number nobody publishes. Our UBS knowledge center tracks the departure data the earnings release does not show.

LPL Financial closed the season after the bell on Thursday, July 30, and the quarter did for the destination side what the registration data had already shown from the supply side. Revenue rose 35% to $5.19 billion, net income was $379 million, GAAP earnings were $4.74 per share against adjusted earnings of $5.84, up 29%. Total client assets reached $2.563 trillion, split $1.548 trillion advisory and $1.014 trillion brokerage, on $23.1 billion of organic net new assets.

The recruiting line is the one that matters here. LPL brought in $24.9 billion of recruited assets in the quarter, up 35% year over year, and $89 billion across the trailing twelve months. Advisor count reached a record 32,475, a net gain of 331. CEO Rich Steinmeier said the pipeline "reached a new record," and management characterized the competitive environment as "spirited," with elevated transition assistance persisting. That is the firm that led all destinations in producing-advisor inflows in the first half, at 1,100 joins against a net gain of 482, confirming from its own income statement what the registration data showed from the other direction.

On Commonwealth, LPL said it remains on track to complete the conversion in the fourth quarter of 2026, and put a number on the part that is still open. Asked about asset retention, management said the firm is "in the mid-80s today, and we continue to work towards our target of 90% retention of client assets." Expected run-rate EBITDA from the deal rose from $410 million to $435 million. That retention gap is not a footnote for anyone reading movement data: Commonwealth departures largely appear as re-registration to LPL ahead of the conversion, which is why the firm tops both the inflow and the gross-outflow tables at the same time.

Where this connects

Winthrop & Co. has just published The State of Advisor Movement, First Half 2026, a comprehensive research report on where advisors moved in the first half of the year and what the movement says about the industry's direction. The earnings above are the demand side of that story. The report documents the supply side, advisor by advisor and firm by firm, from the producing-advisor ledger to the destination channels to the deal economics behind the recruiting postures quoted above. Read the interactive edition here, or start with the key findings.

Advisors weighing what the quarter means for their own practice are welcome to request an introduction; every conversation is held in strict confidence.

All figures and quotations are drawn from each firm's publicly reported earnings releases and calls, as reported July 14 through July 23, 2026, and are attributed as reported. This article shares industry information and the perspective of Winthrop & Co.; it is not legal, tax, or investment advice.