Financial Pros: Help USA TODAY and Statista determine the winners in our fourth annual survey of top-rated firms, which publishes in April 2026. You can pre-register to take the survey here.
Investments always come with risk, but between tariffs, recession worries and overall economic uncertainty, markets have been especially volatile over the past few months.
Markets have responded in historically unprecedented ways to President Donald Trump’s decision to impose then roll back sweeping tariffs. However, stocks rising, falling, and then rising again is nothing new. Stocks tumbled in reaction to the pandemic, inflation, and Federal Reserve interest rate changes, but they also recovered.
Most recently, markets have lost trillions of dollars in response to import tariffs, bounced back, then slipped again. Uncertainty remains.
What’s the average investor to do?
Many experts say the answer is simple: Find a registered investment adviser (RIA) that you like and that fits your financial profile. RIAs are companies with a fiduciary duty to always act in their client’s best interests. They charge fees rather than sales commissions and employ investment adviser representatives (IARs) who are licensed to give financial advice and are increasingly taking a holistic approach to their clients’ financial lives.
Other financial firms, such as broker-dealers, earn commissions from selling stocks, bonds, or mutual funds and need only provide suitable advice. Sometimes, they may sell more expensive products that generate more revenue for them but don’t necessarily meet a client’s long-term goals.
To streamline your search for an adviser, USA TODAY has partnered with market research firm Statista for the third straight year to rank the top 500 RIAs in the searchable lists below.
The ranking is based on the growth of the companies’ assets under management (AUM) over the short and long term and the number of recommendations they received from clients and peers.
USA TODAY and Statista included separate groupings based on the amount of assets RIAs oversee so readers can compare firms in similar size classes. Smaller companies may have fewer clients per adviser and provide more personal service. Larger firms may be able to charge lower fees because of volume-based discounts or have more resources for specialized services.
You also might want to choose a firm based on its location, which is included in the rankings.
The top-ranked company, Baltimore-based Facet Wealth, saw its assets grow 86% in a year and 91% over five years. Ranking fifth, Santa Monica-based Align Impact was the only firm to crack the top five for the second year in a row after ranking second in the 2024 list.
You can learn more about a firm’s specialties and background on its website as well as from the firm’s Form ADV, which it files with the SEC. You can verify a firm’s registration with the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure tool and check the backgrounds and any disciplinary actions at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA’s) BrokerCheck website.
For further details on the methodology behind the rankings, please visit Statista’s website or contact Andreas Korte at [email protected].
