Corey Kupfer on Why an RIA Valuation Correction Is Unlikely

Financial Planning published a piece this week exploring whether a coming wave of advisor retirements could depress RIA valuations — and turned to M&A attorney Corey Kupfer for an expert counterpoint. You can read the full article here.

The Retirement Wave Has Been Predicted Before

The article presents the contrarian argument from two M&A advisors who believe the expected surge of retiring RIA owners will flood the market with supply, ultimately pulling valuations down. Kupfer pushed back on that premise.

"I don't want to say it's not going to happen," Kupfer said. "But you also have an industry here where people can work well into their later life."

Kupfer noted that the retirement wave has been a topic of industry conversation for at least 15 years — and has yet to produce the market shift that has been predicted.

The Buyer Pool Is Just as Deep as the Seller Pipeline

Supply alone does not set price. Kupfer pointed to the continued expansion of the buyer universe as the more important variable to watch.

In the last couple of months, Kupfer has given a handful of presentations to firms seeking to become RIA acquirers. That group included an existing RIA, a family office, a multifamily office, a U.K. wealth manager looking to enter the U.S. market, and a hedge fund. Private equity has also continued providing capital to the large RIA acquirers behind the bulk of recent M&A activity.

"An overabundance of deals is less likely to happen as long as new buyers and new PE money keep coming into the space," Kupfer said. "I'm not saying it won't happen eventually. But I think with the rate of new buyers and new PE coming into the space, we're not super close yet."

How Private Equity Structure Shapes the Valuation Floor

Kupfer offered a structural explanation for why valuations have held where they have — one rooted in how PE deals are designed to work.

When private owners take a stake in a firm that uses the resulting capital infusion to acquire RIAs, they do so expecting to sell their investment at a profit in several years. That expectation creates a built-in incentive for valuations to keep moving upward.

"The game doesn't work unless valuations go up," Kupfer said. "The next bigger player — whether it's PE, a sovereign wealth fund, a family office or insurance firm — wouldn't get in, and the others wouldn't get out, right, unless the valuations are going up."

What Comes Next: Consolidation, Not Collapse

Kupfer does not dismiss the possibility that some PE owners will one day find they cannot get the exit valuations they had anticipated. But he views the more likely outcome as consolidation rather than a broad market correction.

"But we're not late in the PE cycle," Kupfer said. "We're not at the beginning of it anymore, certainly, but we're not anywhere near the end, where other industries have run into trouble."

His view is that when some PE owners do face valuation shortfalls, winners will absorb the losers — a structural shakeout rather than a price collapse.

A Measured Take on a Complex Market

Kupfer's position in the article is notably calibrated. He acknowledged that valuations could grow more slowly, hold steady, or even decline slightly. What he pushed back on is the prediction of a dramatic correction — arguing that the combination of an expanding buyer universe and the structural incentives embedded in PE deal-making makes a large-scale valuation drop unlikely in the near term.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This blog post discusses publicly reported industry developments and expert commentary. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon for legal decision-making. The content reflects analysis based on publicly available information as reported in the cited Financial Planning article dated June 18, 2026. Corey Kupfer was not involved in any specific transaction referenced in the article and his commentary represents general industry analysis rather than specific legal guidance on any matter.