Affiliated Advisors Launches "Equity Uplift" to Help Financial Advisors Maximize Enterprise Value Amid Historic Wave of M&A and Succession Planning

~  New program provides advisors a structured path to transform their practices into high-value, acquisition-ready enterprises

NEW YORK, Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Affiliated Advisors, a leading advisor service and support platform, announced today the launch of Equity Uplift, a proprietary enterprise-value acceleration program built to help financial advisors intentionally strengthen the core drivers that determine long-term equity value. Designed in anticipation of heightened M&A activity and shifting succession dynamics across the wealth management industry, Equity Uplift provides advisors with a structured blueprint to measure their current enterprise value, identify strategic growth levers, and implement a forward-looking plan to secure maximum equity at monetization.

As advisory firms increasingly transition from lifestyle practices to professionally managed enterprises, valuations are being driven by recurring revenue, profitability, scalability, and client-demographic sustainability. Equity Uplift offers a comprehensive methodology to institutionalize these drivers, giving advisors a clear path to elevate their firms into high-value, acquisition-ready enterprises.

"The wealth management industry is entering a defining moment," said Trisha Qualy, Managing Partner of Affiliated Advisors. "With the right strategy and action plan, every advisor can build a transferable business with significant market value through Equity Uplift, which provides the structure, metrics, and roadmap to make that possible."

The Equity Uplift program is built around four foundational pillars that determine valuation multiples in today's RIA and broker-dealer markets.

• Strategic Growth Metrics, guides advisors in aligning their revenue and profitability performance with the most influential valuation criteria. Advisors analyze their firm's growth rate, the proportion of recurring revenue relative to transactional business, the generational spread of their client base, and their EBITDA margin. By optimizing these key indicators, practices can significantly enhance their attractiveness to succession partners and acquirers.
• Operational Excellence, emphasizes the professional infrastructure required to support scalable and sustainable growth. Practices assess the depth of adoption across their technology stack, the degree to which essential processes are documented and repeatable, and the robustness of compliance and business continuity protocols. This pillar also examines scalability, ensuring the firm has the systems in place to increase capacity without proportional increases in cost or headcount.
• People and Team Leverage, helps advisors build a business that can endure beyond the founder. Rather than centering enterprise value solely on one principal, Equity Uplift evaluates team productivity, advisor-to-client ratios, internal leadership development, and succession readiness. The program equips advisors with strategies to institutionalize client relationships, develop emerging leaders within the firm, and implement a documented transition plan that enhances enterprise value.
• High-Value Client Positioning, focuses on revenue quality and market positioning. Advisors examine the composition of their client base to ensure a healthy mix of high-net-worth households, generational diversification, and profitability segmentation. This pillar also supports advisors in building business development capacity that consistently attracts new ideal clients, ensuring the firm can grow both its revenues and its long-term appeal to capital providers and strategic acquirers.

Each participant in the Equity Uplift program receives a proprietary scorecard, benchmarking their firm against top-performing advisory practices across each of the four pillars. Based on these benchmarks, Affiliated Advisors provides a customized 12–24 month roadmap designed to accelerate enterprise value creation. The roadmap outlines measurable targets, strategic initiatives, operational enhancements, and leadership development plans to position the firm for premium valuation multiples.

"Valuation is not a mystery. It is the direct result of intentional, measurable actions," Tom Rippberger, Managing Partner for Affiliated Advisors. "Equity Uplift empowers advisors with clarity and control over their future equity outcome by helping them transform value-creation into a strategic goal."

To learn more about Affiliated Advisor's award-winning platform, log onto www.affiliatedadvisors.com 

About Affiliated Advisors

Affiliated Advisors is a leading growth platform dedicated to empowering financial advisors to build enterprise-ready firms with enduring equity value. Through business consulting, M&A and succession planning expertise, along with technology enablement, and advisor development programs, Affiliated Advisors equips independent advisors with the resources and strategies required to grow, compete and succeed in a rapidly evolving wealth management landscape.

Securities and investment advisory services offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. Osaic Wealth is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Osaic Wealth.

SOURCE Affiliated Advisors