What Percentage of Clients Follow Their Advisor to a New Firm?

The short answer: High, but not automatic. Cerulli's transition research puts realized asset retention at roughly 78% for broker-dealer-to-broker-dealer moves, 82% for moves to independence, and 89% for independent-to-independent moves. Fidelity's study of advisors who switched firms found they kept an average of 80% of the clients they wanted to bring. The averages are comforting; the distribution is the real story. Promoter-grade client relationships follow at 62% stated intent while detractor-grade relationships follow at 17%, which means your retention rate was largely written before you ever picked a destination.

Every advisor considering a move asks the same first question: will my clients come with me? The industry's honest answer is that the clients you actually want have already decided, and the research can tell you what they decided if you read it carefully.

What do the studies actually say?

Three bodies of research matter, and they measure different things.

Cerulli measures assets, by path. The 2025 Cerulli transition study found advisors typically lose about 22% of assets when moving between broker-dealers, about 18% when moving from a broker-dealer to an independent model, and only about 11% when moving from one independent firm to another. Two things stand out. First, even the worst path retains three-quarters of assets. Second, the independent-to-independent number is twice as good as the wirehouse-to-wirehouse number, which says something important about what kind of relationship survives a move.

Fidelity measures clients, against intent. Fidelity's Advisor Movement Research Study found that advisors who moved retained an average of 80% of the clients they wanted to move with them. Read that phrasing twice. Advisors triage before they resign; small households, firm-attached relationships, and unprofitable accounts get deliberately left behind. Whole-book retention and target-list retention are different statistics, and nearly every confident number you hear at a conference is the second one wearing the first one's clothes.

Client surveys measure the resistance. Broadridge asked investors directly and got the sobering side: 47% of Gen X clients and 39% of Boomers said they would stay with their current firm even if their advisor left, and for roughly four in ten younger clients the firm's reputation outweighs the advisor. Stated intent is not realized behavior, but the gap is instructive: advisors self-select whom they invite, which is exactly why realized numbers beat surveyed intent.

Our own placements sit at the strong end of the realized data. When Craig Haba and Ben Sherry moved their Boston practice from Northwestern Mutual to Raymond James, they retained 98.7% of their wealth management clients, a result you can read about on our testimonials page. Numbers like that are not luck. They are preparation meeting a portable book.

Why do some clients follow and others stay?

Because retention is not one number. It is a weighted average of relationship strengths that already exist.

Relationship depth dominates everything. Fidelity's Millionaire Outlook research segmented clients by loyalty and found 62% of promoters would switch firms with their advisor, against 17% of detractors. Same industry, same product, a 45-point spread on the single variable of how the client feels about you. An advisor who wants to forecast retention should start by honestly sorting the book into those two columns.

The destination channel matters. The Cerulli path data implies clients follow most readily into independence and least readily between look-alike employee platforms. A move that gives clients a story, lower costs, fiduciary structure, more personal service, converts better than a move that looks like a payday. Schwab's research on newly independent advisors backs this: 60% reported their clients were immediately aligned with the move, and 74% said independence lets them build better long-term relationships.

Legal structure sets the tempo. Moves under the Broker Protocol allow immediate solicitation with basic client contact information. Non-protocol exits do not, and industry veterans have been blunt that firms withdrawing from the Protocol created an impediment that bakes legal cost into each move. Add enforced garden leave, designed precisely to interrupt client contact during the decisive window, and the paperwork can matter as much as the relationship. We cover the legal machinery separately in can my firm sue me for leaving.

Product portability decides the marginal client. Assets that transfer in kind move easily. Assets in proprietary funds, lending relationships, and banking entanglements create friction, tax consequences, and a reason for a wavering client to stay. This is also the quiet answer to who owns the book: whoever the client can follow without pain. That question has its own guide in do you actually own your book of business.

How fast does it happen?

Faster than the folklore says, and the speed is strategic.

Industry reporting in 2026 notes that transition mechanics which once took 90 to 120 days have compressed to 30 to 60, and that the first 90 days after a move are where recruiting promises face their sharpest stress test. The documented extremes are striking: in one RIA launch covered by Financial Planning, more than half of a $400 million book transferred within six days.

The operational lesson: retention is front-loaded. The clients who move in the first three weeks were won before resignation day, by years of relationship and weeks of lawful preparation. The clients still undecided at day 60 are being actively re-recruited by your former firm, which has your production history, your client list, and a retention team. Every day of drift favors the incumbent. The full sequencing, what you can prepare before resignation and what must wait, is laid out in our transition checklist and in how long a transition actually takes.

How do you engineer the number upward?

Four disciplines separate the 98% outcomes from the 75% ones.

Score the book before you decide anything. Rate every household on relationship depth, portability, and firm entanglement. The promoter-detractor spread is a forecasting tool: applied honestly, it predicts your realized rate within a few points and, more usefully, tells you which twenty relationships need a plan rather than a phone call.

Pick the destination for the client story, not the check. The path data is unambiguous: moves that improve the client's situation retain better than lateral trades. If you cannot explain in two sentences why the client wins, retention will tell you what the clients concluded.

Respect the legal choreography. Protocol status, non-solicit language, and garden-leave provisions determine what you may say and when. The advisors who lose clients in litigation-shaped moves are almost always the ones who improvised.

Execute the first 90 days like a campaign. Two-thirds of moving advisors now build a formal transition plan. The ones who retain in the high 90s treat the window as the campaign it is: sequenced outreach, paperwork ready, every top household contacted lawfully within days, not weeks.

Retention is the variable that decides whether a transition was a triumph or a haircut, and it is largely determined before resignation day. If you want an honest, house-by-house forecast of what your book would do, and a plan for the twenty relationships that will decide it, request an introduction. We have run this campaign many times, and the numbers above are why preparation, not hope, is the strategy.