Financial advisors and wealth managers have been faced with a myriad of changes and uncertainty over the last couple of years, including geopolitical events, turbulent markets, complex regulatory requirements and an increasingly competitive industry landscape, as consolidation accelerates. Despite those challenges, financial advisor wellbeing was up 7% from 2023, according to the Kitces Research 2025 Advisor Wellbeing Study.
The report, which surveyed nearly 1,500 members of advisory teams, aims to measure and track trends in advisor wellbeing, just as the industry benchmarks everything else.
While past reports found that advisor wellbeing was roughly on par with the U.S. population, the 2025 survey found that it was higher than the broader population. Kitces asked respondents to rate their current level of life quality, or wellbeing, on a 0-10 scale. (The “Cantril ladder” is the name for the 0-10 scale, with the best possible life being a 10 and the worst possible life being a 0.)
The average 2025 Cantril rating was 7.3, up about 7% from 6.8 in 2023. That compares to 6.7 for the U.S. population.
The researchers also classified advisors as “unwell,” those with Cantril scores of 5 and below) or “thriving,” those with scores of 9 and above. This year, the share of advisors classed as “unwell” dropped from about 20% in 2023 to 12.5% in 2025. Further, the share of “thriving” advisors rose from 13.8% to 22.5%.
Firms with happier advisors reported stronger business performance. Advisors in the “thriving” group tend to work at firms with higher revenue per advisor and per team member and earn higher annual income. Wellbeing also encourages retention and lower turnover.
“In this rapidly evolving environment, understanding what actually succeeds (and fails!) in driving advisor wellbeing has never been more important,” the report stated. “High advisor turnover doesn’t just affect internal morale or disrupt client relationships; it directly threatens a firm’s ability to grow and sustain its business. Productivity metrics like revenue per advisor or client acquisition rates quickly lose their meaning if firms are stuck in a costly and constant cycle of attrition.”
The report also analyzed wellbeing among advisors at firms that have taken private equity money, and found that those advisors were happier. But they point out that this is primarily tied to the firm’s pre-existing financial success, achieved prior to the investment.
When that is controlled for, Kitces found no relationship between wellbeing ratings and outside ownership.
“Given how recent this M&A activity is, though, there is reason to think this relationship may change,” the report stated.
The survey found that just 28% of private equity-backed advisors strongly agreed their life has purpose, with 45% saying they’re optimistic about the future. That compares with 44% and 58%, respectively, for advisors without outside ownership.
“This suggests that the shift in financial goals and the time horizon of institutional ownership really does come as a trade-off to advisors’ own personal time horizon and goals (which tend to be longer-term careers far beyond the ownership window of current institutional owners), worsening their future outlook.”
The research found two factors—“Experience” and “The Right Workplace”—to be the strongest drivers of advisor wellbeing. Those are followed by “Autonomy,” “Revenue Per Hour” and “Having Enough.”
“Years of industry experience emerged as one of the strongest predictors of advisor wellbeing, presumably because the more time advisors spend gaining ‘reps’ (i.e., repetitions that develop relevant skills)—handling diverse client scenarios, building trust, converting leads and turning prospects into clients—the more competent and effective they feel, which improves their wellbeing.”
Advisors in the startup phase reported lower wellbeing than those running established firms.
When thinking about “The Right Workplace,” the report notes that an advisor’s wellbeing is tied to their firm, their specific service team and the physical work environment.
Take their technology stack, for instance, the biggest wellbeing driver at the firm level. About a quarter of advisors with low stack satisfaction scores (scores of 1-3) are at high risk of turnover over the next five years, compared to just 1% of advisors with high tech stack satisfaction scores (9-10).
“This creates a crucial trade-off for advisory firms between the cost of better technology (firms with low stack-satisfaction scores spend 3.0% of their revenue on technology versus 7.1% for those with high satisfaction scores) and the cost of high advisor turnover,” the report stated.
