The next real recruiting differentiator in this business will not be the check, and it will not be the grid. It will be which firm can get you adopting AI in a way that is safe, compliant, and changes how your week runs.
Payouts at the top have been within a few points of each other for years, and the other value prop has been the simple idea of good service, as promised. What no firm has been able to sell credibly is an answer to the one complaint I hear on every platform: there is not enough time.
For a Few Years, AI Was a Small-Platform Pitch
The pitch was efficiency and automation: build a bigger business with less staff and get your Thursdays back. It belonged almost entirely to newer, smaller platforms like Savvy that have seen growth, but they struggle from lack of brand clout–as well as the normal service struggles of startup brands.
Despite their strong growth on a percentage basis, more advisors said no than yes.
The tools were not the problem. You do not move thirty years of client relationships to a firm your clients have never heard of on the strength of a software demo. The conversation with a seventy-year-old client about why her statements now carry a name she’s never heard of is one most advisors would rather not have two hundred times.
Trust was the barrier, and trust kept winning–especially for firms north of $200M.
Trust and Capability Are Finally in the Same Place
Now, Anthropic enters wealth management. The headline belonged to Schwab, becoming the first RIA custodian to integrate Claude, across the sixteen thousand-plus advisory firms that custody there. Suddenly, you have top-tier names in both capability (Anthropic) and trust (Schwab) jumping in with both feet.
More broadly, Claude for Financial Advisors connects to CRM, planning, and estate tools regardless of where your assets sit. Anyone with a credit card and a free afternoon has access to good AI.
So having the tool is not the advantage. I have watched advisors pay for software for two straight years and open it four times. I believe adoption is the new recruiting pitch. Advisors like the idea, but they need to trust that it is vetted, trusted, and able to be integrated with support.
I think the RIAs and BDs that can demonstrate a process, safety protocols, and training will start to pull ahead of everyone else in a big way.
Where the Recruiting Money Goes Next
Firms with capital have spent it on recruiting, in checks and forgivable notes and numbers that climb every cycle, because that is the lever that has always moved advisors. That’s already begun to feel the rumblings of correction. Recruiting dollars are getting pickier.
Money spent on AI adoption, for the platform and for the advisors they bring on, compounds in a way a check does not for the recruiting teams. You take a check once, you pay tax on it, and then it sits on your balance sheet as a note for nine years. Capability keeps paying, and it pays in the currency every advisor tells me they want: hours. Will up front money go away? No–but you’ll begin to attract highly skilled owners who see their practices as their most valuable asset, beyond a one-time check.
Time will tell whether the large firms can execute. Big companies are not historically fast, and rolling out to sixteen thousand firms is a different problem than a startup shipping to four hundred. Some of the AI-native firms will stay ahead on product.
Still, large firms can compete on both value propositions now, and newcomers can compete on only one. That asymmetry is real, and I do not think the industry has absorbed what it means for recruiting yet.
What to Ask on Your Next Platform Demo
These are the questions I would put on the table, whether or not you are thinking about moving.
Who implements this for me, and how long do they stay with me after go-live?
Is it included, or is it a line item on top of my platform fee?
Does it connect to my CRM and my planning software, or only to your custodial data?
Where does my client data live, and what are you doing with it?
How many of your advisors use it every day, which is a very different number than how many hold licenses?
A Word Before Anybody Overcorrects
Nobody should change firms for AI. Tools move fast; the leader today may not lead in three years, and you cannot repaper your book every time somebody ships a better product. A platform that fits your business badly, even with excellent AI, still fits your business badly.
This Ends Up Being a Fit Question
AI is a feature right up until it becomes part of how a firm supports you. Then it stops being a feature and becomes fit, and fit has always been the only thing that decides this correctly.
Ask those questions even if you have no intention of going anywhere. The answers will tell you a great deal about how a firm treats advisors after the paperwork is signed.
And if you want a second opinion on what you are hearing, you know where to find me.