Ameriprise Financial said it had one of the strongest quarters for client inflows, bringing in $13.3 billion in new client assets during the fourth quarter of 2025, up 18% year-over-year. On an earnings call Thursday, CEO Jim Cracchiolo attributed the flows to organic growth, recruiting success and “very good” retention, despite news stories about advisor departures. 

Total client assets in the Advice and Wealth segment reached a record high of $1.2 trillion, up 13% year-over-year. 

“These results reflect the strength of our legacy flows from our adviser engagement, client acquisition in the target market and our recruiting success,” Cracchiolo said.

The firm has been in the news recently for some high-profile advisor departures. Just this week, Shorewood, Ill.-based Martin & Associates, with over $500 million in AUM, left Ameriprise for NorthRock Partners, a Minneapolis-headquartered RIA with more than $11 billion in assets.

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But Cracchiolo said the firm had strong retention, although he didn’t provide a percentage. 

During the quarter, Ameriprise recruited 91 advisors to its platform, bringing total headcount to 10,503, up 1% year-over-year. 

“Overall, we feel very good,” Cracchiolo said. “It doesn’t mean you won’t lose some people because it depends on what people put out there and offer them. … We got hit with a little last year, as you recognize, and others do. So we know that this is something we are dealing with.

“We’re not looking to just attract anyone here,” he said. “We have an excellent platform. We have excellent capabilities. We have excellent leadership that helps advisors. I continue to get notes from people who have come to us from the independents, from wirehouses, from RIAs, and they said their only mistake was not coming to us sooner. And their growth since they got here has been tremendous.”

Advisor productivity reached a record $1.1 million per advisor during the fourth quarter, up 8% from the prior year quarter. 

Assets in the firm’s wrap business were up 17% to $670 billion during the quarter, attributed to good flow momentum in the firm’s new Signature Wealth Program, a unified managed account platform, launched last year. Cracchiolio said adoption of the platform is still in “early innings.”

“And all of its capabilities—the advisors are getting used to from how they do the portfolio construction, etc., but they love the idea of the proposals that generates, how it monitors the portfolio, how it rebalances the portfolio, how it does more centralized trading for the portfolio, etc., and the reporting that they’re able to provide the client and the intelligence from it.”

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He said the firm recently added managed SMAs to the platform and will add other capabilities. 

Advisor recruiting has been a popular topic on broker/dealer earnings calls this season. Raymond James CEO Paul Shoukry called recruiting a “marathon, not a sprint,” and said it was a “long-term process that requires a lot of investment.”

“When I hear other firms talk about, we think next quarter, we’re going to lean into recruiting and put a little bit more money into it—that’s not sustainable long-term recruiting,” he said.

During an earnings call earlier that day, Stifel CEO Ron Kruszweski said the firm was considering allocating more resources to recruiting after doubling the number of advisors added in 2025 compared to the prior year. Kruszewski said that while the firm’s recruiting offers had been “conservative,” they had been at the top of their range to remain competitive and outpace 2024 hires.