RIA Wire Answers · Updated September 2026 · By the RIA Wire data desk
How many RIAs manage $100M to $500M in assets?
As of the SEC's September 2026 Form ADV extract, 6,560 US SEC-registered investment advisers report between $100 million and $500 million in regulatory assets under management. Together they manage roughly $1.67 trillion. That is 44% of the 14,863 US firms reporting AUM to the SEC — the single largest slice of the RIA market by firm count.
Key numbers (September 2026 SEC Form ADV extract)
- —6,560 firms in the $100M–$500M band, out of 14,863 US SEC-registered advisers reporting AUM.
- —Roughly $1.67 trillion in combined regulatory AUM across the band.
- —Median firm size: 5 employees. 79% of band firms have 8 employees or fewer.
- —100% of band firms list a phone number in the SEC file; 92.8% list a website.
What does the typical $100M–$500M RIA look like?
Small. The median firm in the band has 5 employees. Of the 6,560 firms, 2,107 have 1–3 employees, 3,071 have 4–8, 930 have 9–15, 305 have 16–30, and only 147 have more than 30. In practice that means the person who picks the custodian, the portfolio software, and the fund lineup is usually the founder — not a procurement department.
That is why vendors treat this band as the core prospecting segment: the firms are big enough to have real budgets, and small enough that the principal still answers the phone.
How fast does the $100M–$500M band change?
Between the August and September 2026 SEC extracts alone, 132 firms entered the band, 4 grew out the top past $500M, 1 fell below $100M, and 27 disappeared from the SEC file entirely — absorbed, wound down, or deregistered. The month before (July to August), 96 entered and 22 disappeared. A list of these firms bought once a year is measurably wrong within a quarter.
Where does this number come from?
The SEC publishes a monthly extract of every registered investment adviser's Form ADV — the disclosure every RIA is legally required to keep current. Item 5F(2)(c) of that form is the firm's regulatory assets under management. Count the US firms whose reported figure falls between $100,000,000 and $500,000,000 and you get 6,560 as of September 2026. Anyone can reproduce the count from the SEC's free download; RIA Wire computes it from that file every month.
RIA Wire sells the cleaned monthly file of all 6,560 firms — every name, CRD, phone, website, city, state, and AUM — as one national CSV plus every state pre-cut.
See what's in the RIA Wire file — pricing is on the page →Common questions
How many RIAs are there in the United States in total?
The SEC's September 2026 Form ADV extract lists 14,863 US-based SEC-registered advisers reporting regulatory AUM. State-registered advisers (generally under $100M) are additional and are not in the SEC file.
Why do vendors target the $100M–$500M AUM band specifically?
It combines budget with reachability: the firms are past the survival stage and buy real tools, but the median firm has 5 employees, so the founder or principal still makes vendor decisions directly.
How is 'assets under management' measured in this count?
By regulatory assets under management (RAUM) as reported in Item 5F(2)(c) of Form ADV — the standardized, legally required figure every SEC-registered adviser files. It is the only AUM number that is consistent across all firms.
How current is the 6,560 figure?
It is computed from the SEC's September 2026 monthly extract. The SEC publishes a new file each month, and the count moves by roughly 80–100 firms a month as firms enter, outgrow, or leave the band.
Do these firms have public contact information?
Yes. Form ADV requires a main office phone number — 100% of band firms list one — and 92.8% list a website. The SEC file contains no email addresses for any firm.
Source and method
Every figure on this page is computed from the SEC's monthly Form ADV extract (the public FOIA file of every SEC-registered investment adviser), using the same parsing and threshold-crossing logic that builds the RIA Wire subscriber files. Figures are from the September 2026 extract; the SEC publishes a new file each month, and these pages are refreshed against it. Any row can be verified against the SEC's own download.