Fisher Investments is facing a swarm of M&A-minded national RIAs, but it's obsessively self-contained after growing by nearly $300 billion since a 2019 PR mishap, through a media marketing blitz that's second to none

Fisher Investments has raised its game after a barrage of fresh TV advertising that has lifted managed assets by $88 billion in the last 18 months and put Ken Fisher's 2019 media dust-up squarely in the rearview mirror.

The Plano, Texas RIA, long-known as the best in the business at turning cold junk mail into hot leads, keeps adding new clients through new media, and building its business like a Ferrari roaring down an F1 straightaway. 

Its approach relies on zero M&A, but follows the unflinching vision of Executive Chair Ken Fisher, who has a knack for decisive acts to evolve his RIA business when few are watching. 

“On some levels it’s almost like [Fisher] thrive[s] on sticking [its] finger in the eye of the rest of the industry,” says Andrew Besheer, founder and principal of Bronxville, N.Y. consultancy Besheer & Associates, in an email exchange.

Fisher is effectively “saying, ‘We don’t need AI models, [or] digital prospecting to drive growth, we’re going to do it the old fashioned way, plastering our advertising all over TV, print and the digital versions of legacy media.

"Then we’re going to cold call the sh*t out of any leads we turn up, and get to people before any other wealth manager has a chance,’” Besheer explains.

Fisher declined to respond to two separate requests for comment. 

Strategic moves

Although Fisher is famously known for its "old-fashioned" sales and marketing tactics, the firm has made several strategic moves – mostly since its founder turned 70. 

The numbers underpinning its six-year growth run – it manages $386.6 billion today, up from $112 billion in late 2019 – show the firm's bets are paying off.

Among the most sigificant changes, Fisher, 75, cemented an estate and succession plan in 2024, by selling a 23.5% stake to Advent International and ADIA. The $3 billion deal valued the firm at an estimated $12.75 billion. 

The deal future-proofed the firm to survive its founder's eventual death, and provided him with "estate tax" benefits that give the company the option of staying independent no matter what. See: Ken Fisher reaps staggering sum in deal that values Fisher Investments near $13 billion.

Fisher has never said that he will leave – or sell more of it – and Damian Ornani, only 41 at the time, has been its CEO since 2016. Ken Fisher's son, Nathan Fisher, has worked at the company and now heads Fisher SMB, a 401(k) unit spun off by the firm in 2024.

In 2023, Fisher moved its headquarters from Camas, Wash., to Plano, Texas, adding some tax benefits and a lower cost of living to its bottom line. It previously moved from Woodside, Calif. to Camas, over an eight year period beginning in 2007. See: With 15,000 Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard staffers there, Dallas metroplex notches Fisher Investments headquarters almost as a formality; Ken Fisher and 1,200 staff are already Lone Star denizens.

Changing image

What hasn't changed is the company's monumental advertising barrages. The latest campaign is taglined “clearly different” and contrasts brokerage accounts with accounts managed by a Fisher fiduciary. “When you do better, we do better,” is the kicker.

The campaigns are a marked differenced from days gone by when Fisher, himself, was once exclusively the face of the company on television. 

But in 2019, media outlets like The New York Times and Bloomberg, called him out for using sexist remarks about women in a presentation to describe the process of winning new clients. The jocular banter may have been overlooked at a 1950s men's club, but not at the height of the “MeToo” era, at a national conference.

Fisher dropped behind the scenes amid the uproar and hasn't appeared in an advertisement since. Television ads now often put women front-and-center, such as LA actress Starla Parrish, and Fisher female executives like Senior Vice President Judith Abrams.

The ad-run has transformed Fisher's media reputation from one that was largely synonymous with junk mail, to a brand that dominates TV airwaves alongside JPMorgan and Bank of America. See: The world's largest RIA takes the cult-on-the-hill to the Washington state woods

Fisher, which spends as much as 6% of its annual revenues on marketing, according to a 2019 ThinkAdvisor interview, has also rejigged its business model. It's greatly increasing its delivery of financial planning, after decades spent primarily as a call-center investment manager.

Fisher recently acquired the website link (URL), fiduciary.com, and uses the site to mix investor education with lead-generation for the firm. See: Fisher Investments launches 'fiduciary.com' to 'educate' clients and RIAs, but site smacks of 'naked lead-gen,' says Fiduciary Institute's head.

Old school chops

Fisher is also growing with one hand – and, perhaps a tail – tied behind its back, because it simply doesn't do roll-up acquisitions, and it spun-out its potentially asset inflating 401(k) unit. See: Ken Fisher hits a milestone of $100 billion of AUM.

“You can argue that [Fisher is] so old school, they actually had to tear down Ken Fisher’s school to build the old school, but it seems to work like a charm,” Besheer quips. 

Indeed, on a percentage basis, roll-ups like Corient and Mariner Wealth Advisors are growing at a far faster pace. Six of the nation's largest roll-ups have grown by an average of 631.9%, over the last six-years – more than double the 311.8% growth enjoyed by Fisher, over the same time.

“Sustaining a given rate of growth gets harder as scale increases," says Eliza De Pardo, founder and director of De Pardo Consulting, in an email.

"It simply requires a greater volume of new assets to move the same percentage … so matching the [roll-ups'] percentage growth would have required disproportionately more in absolute net-new assets and market return just to keep pace,” she explains.

“A fairer lens is dollar growth, not percentage growth, and Fisher added $262.6 billion in absolute terms over six years, which holds up well against the peer group, despite the lower headline percentage – and they did this without transacting,” she adds.

Doggedly successful

Fisher's model has a strength that the RIA industry's biggest acquirers lack.

Fisher is the industry's largest organic-growth-only RIA, it has almost 35-years of experience selling to high-net-worth investors, and its marketing budget is likely par with giant firms like global car-rental behemoth Avis, which spent $246 million last year.

“I don’t know that it’s easily replicable, and it certainly requires a very specific sales oriented culture, mindset and commitment on the part of the employees, but it sure does seem to work,” Besheer says.

It doggedly, and successfully bucks trend after trend, adds Matt Crow, CEO of Mercer Capital, an RIA M&A valuations and research firm in Memphis, Tenn., via email.

“Fisher is practically a repudiation of the conventional wisdom in the industry – growth via consolidation," Crow explains.

"One reason it’s successful is that it’s different; if every firm tried to grow through advertising, Fisher’s plan wouldn’t work nearly as well,” he adds.

Marketing Achilles' heel

In the 1990s, Fisher considered adopting a roll-up strategy of its own, but it decided that marketing-driven organic growth would prove more lucrative, more successful, and that clients won by the firm – rather than bought – would likely stick around longer.

Every major private equity-backed roll-up has, at some time or another, has promised – one day – to turn itself into an organic asset gathering machine, once the fruits of consolidation had bloomed. See: Thomas H. Lee puts Hightower rollup back on the market, with 'Goldman Sachs' as sherpa, after building in a softer, more organic side.

But consolidation, followed by a full-scale organic growth has yet to be achieved and is, perhaps, more a dream than a reality. None have built anything to match the scale and success of Fisher's sales model.

“Marketing is consistently one of the weakest operational capabilities within most advisory firms, and scaling through acquisition doesn't fix that; it just adds AUM on top of what might be a slow organic engine,” says De Pardo.

"The marketing and business development efforts take a unique skill set and require time to ramp up. It’s also not an exact science, there’s a lot of testing and learning to achieve results. In short, it’s not a quick fix," she explains.

Bang for the buck

Fisher’s client acquisition costs likely far exceed the average RIA's – between $3,500-to-$15,000 – because of its huge spending on indirect marketing to maintain its brand. 

Yet, while it exceeds most RIAs, it pales in comparison to buying an existing practice – between $10,000 and $25,000 per client in enterprise value, usually calculated as 5-times to 15-times earnings (EBITDA). 

Fisher's heavy spending on client acquisition also yields another benefit – sustaining an image of the company as a “human” firm, where clients know who they're dealing with.

The approach resembles – at times – public campaigns run by the likes of Josh Brown, Ric Edelman, Peter Mallouk, and Charles ‘Chuck’ Schwab. See: New 'owning it' ads reposition Schwab.

Given Fisher has previously stated it spends 6% of its revenues on marketing, it also likely spends as much to acquire net new assets as many large roll-ups do, even if they are “organic.”

Indeed, even if Fisher were to earn no more than 1% in fees for managing its clients' assets, 6% of that $3.8 billion sum amounts to $231.96 million, up from an estimated $68.4 million in 2019.

By way of comparison, the average small RIA spends up to $120,000 a year on marketing; mid-sized firms spend up to $500,000 a year; and large firms spend up to $10 million a year, according to a a Select Advisor Institute report. See: RIAs need to get over 'quotas' when it comes to sales and growth, or end up being owned by an RIA that knows how to impose them.

With friends like these

Since 2020, a large number of major rollup firms and Fisher have taken on private equity investment to support growth. See: Thomas H. Lee puts Hightower rollup back on the market, with 'Goldman Sachs' as sherpa, after building in a softer, more organic side but two voracious RIA giant buyers are giving it a hard pass – for now.

In 2020, General Atlantic took a minority stake in Creative Planning, then, in 2024, TPG Capital invested in a deal that valued the firm at $16 billion; Leonard Green & Partners (2021) and Neuberger Berman (2024) now hold stakes in Mariner; and WEG's current owners include TA Associates (2019), and Onex Corp. (2021).

GTCR (2020) and Carlyle (2023) also now hold stakes in CAPTRUST; Mercer, which previously took on investment from Genstar Capital, Lovell Minnick (2015), and Oak Hill Capital (2019), took on fresh investment from Atlas Partners and Harvest Partners in 2023; and Mubadala Capital acquired Corient and its parent, CI Financial, in late 2024.

Fisher took on its own private equity investors, ADIA and Advent International, in 2024.

At the time of the sale, Advent managing partner, David Mussafer said Advent intended to leverage its "deep expertise" to help Fisher "best capitalize on the opportunities ahead."

ADIA, the acronym for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund, has extremely close ties to CI Financial and Corient-owner Mubadala Capital, an alternative asset management subsidiary of another Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. See: Corient is set to leapfrog its AUM 135% to $479 billion, largely through European deals; now it's circling back to the U.S.

Top table

Fisher is also not alone in posting stellar growth, even if it is at the top table for absolute growth.

At least a dozen firms, including Creative Planning, Mariner Wealth Advisors, Wealth Enhancement Group, Mercer, Corient and CAPTRUST have all grown like gangbusters over the last six years, albeit often as a result of sizable M&A spending.

Between 2020 and 2026, Creative Planning's AUM grew 591.2%, from $50 billion to $295.6 billion; Mariner grew 447.9%, from $28 billion to $125.4 billion; CAPTRUST grew 711.6%, from $45 billion to $320.2 billion; Mercer grew 466.7%, from $18 billion to $84 billion; WEG grew 643.2%, from $19 billion to $122.2 billion; and Corient grew 931%, from $16 billion, to $165 billion (and $479 billion of global assets).

Fisher first crossed the $100 billion of AUM threshold in 2019. It passed $200 billion in late 2021, and $300 billion in mid-2025. At its current growth rate it should pass the $400 billion mark by March 2027. 

Since June 2020, it has grown by 311.8%, to $386.6 billion today, including absolute growth of $262.6 billion – $164.9 billion above estimated market returns of $97.7 billion, based on a 60:40 portfolio held over the same period. See: 'Firing on all cylinders,' Fisher Investments forms East Coast hub.

The company is growing absolute terms too, with net-new assets in the last year-and-a-half standing at an estimated $24 billion; or 27.9% of every dollar of the firm's 18-month $88 billion AUM growth-run, using a 60:40* portfolio as a benchmark. See: Fisher Investments has a legit shot at hitting $200 billion in AUM this year. 

* The estimated percentage of Fisher Investments' net-new asset growth subtracts asset appreciation from the firm's total 18-month asset growth, based on a 60:40 stock-to-bonds split, using the S&P 500 index, and the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund as benchmarks.

** Assuming a 3.5-fold trailing-twelve-month revenue multiple in an average valuation for an RIA with $300 million of AUM, 200 clients, and industry standard fees of 1%, a roll-up can easily spend $50,000 or more acquiring each client, if you factor out the value the buyer ascribes to the potential to arbitrage the future consolidation of the RIA’s operations.