Schwab just released its 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study — twenty years of data from 1,236 firms. Most people will read it for the growth numbers. I read it for something else: the quietest, most consistent finding in the whole report.

The firms that grow fastest aren’t winning on strategy. They’re winning on operations.

The numbers

Top Performing Firms grew 25.4% in 2025, with 12.9% coming from net new asset flows. They captured 2.8 times more assets from new clients and 4.2 times more from existing relationships than everyone else.

So what are they doing differently? Schwab’s answer, across twenty years of data: they document things. They track things. They execute consistently.

  • They’re more likely to have a documented ideal client persona, a written client value proposition, and an actual marketing plan.
  • More than 70% track general inquiries from prospects (vs. 58% of other firms), and 85% track where those inquiries come from (vs. 71%).
  • 63% have a documented training and development process (vs. 48%). 74% document compensation and incentives (vs. 59%). 70% document performance management (vs. 56%).

Read that list again

Nothing on it is a growth hack. No secret marketing channel, no pricing trick, no product innovation. It’s personas, plans, tracking, and documentation — the unglamorous machinery of a well-run practice.

As Schwab’s Lisa Salvi puts it: firms that pair strategic clarity with disciplined execution are better positioned for stronger organic growth, and the effect compounds year after year.

The AI footnote that matters

One more finding worth your attention: Top Performing Firms use AI to automate time-consuming manual workflows 31% of the time, versus 19% for everyone else. Note the framing — not AI for marketing copy or note-taking (everyone does that), but AI pointed at workflows. The top firms aren’t asking “how can AI help?” They’re asking “which manual process is eating our week?” That’s an operations question, not a technology question.

What this means for your practice

You don’t need to be a $1B firm to act like a Top Performing Firm. The study’s playbook is almost embarrassingly accessible:

  • Write down your ideal client. One page. If everyone on your team would describe them differently, you don’t have one.
  • Track every inquiry and its source. You can’t optimize what you don’t measure, and most firms are flying blind on where clients actually come from.
  • Document one process per month. Onboarding first, then follow-up, then reviews. In a year you’ll have the operating manual the top firms already have.
  • Point automation at workflows, not novelties. Find the manual process that eats the most hours and fix that before experimenting with anything else.

The benchmarking study gets read as a growth report. It’s really an operations report wearing a growth costume. The firms at the top didn’t find a better strategy — they built a better machine and let it compound.

Source: Schwab 2026 RIA Benchmarking Study (1,236 firms, 20th annual edition).