Most Interesting Questions For 2026

Charles Paikert

23 December 2025

Our US correspondent takes a look at the powerful trend of making private market investments more of a retail business, the AI impact on wealth management, M&A trends, and more.

Private markets retail push: More boom, bust or slowdown?
The question of whether alternatives have a place in ultra-HNW and institutional portfolios has long been settled. But whether mass affluent and HNW individual investors will survive the furious retail push by the financial services industry to “democratize" private markets is another matter entirely.

Wall Street is gunning for Main Street and access to the retirement 401 market. Private funds tout diversification and the potential for outsize returns, but caveats abound: plenty of risk, of course, as well as limited liquidity, long lock-up periods, high fees, opacity and extreme difficulty gaining access to top quartile managers.

It was hard to find a firm in the wealth management space that didn’t get on the bandwagon in 2025. Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Cerity Partners, AssetMark, Vanguard and State Street Global Advisors, to name just a few, all planted a stake in the ground.

While there’s plenty of scrutiny to go around, private credit lending has drawn the most attention so far. Sector leaders Blue Owl Capital, Blackstone, Ares, Apollo Global and KKR have marketed aggressively and attracted billions in assets.

But the private lending market had a big scare when heavily leveraged US car parts supplier First Brands and its subprime lender both went bankrupt, causing JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to warn of similar “cockroaches” in the financial system. And by year’s end it became clear that a number of publicly traded private credit funds called business development companies significantly underperformed the broader stock market.

So will Wall Street’s trillion dollar bet on private markets accelerate in 2026, moderate, or will the words of outgoing SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw prove prophetic: “As calls for retail investor access to private markets accelerate,” Crenshaw said, “I am concerned that we are headed for a high-speed collision – with Main Street investors left without airbags.”

Where will artificial intelligence be most impactful next?
Yes, it’s scary. A technological revolution that is already reshaping how business is done has been unleashed, and, as Osaic CEO Jamie Price put it an interview earlier this year: “We’re at maybe the very, very bottom of the first inning.”

So far, the most widely adopted AI applications among financial advisors have been automated note taking tools like Jump and Zocks; software that automates workflow and administrative tasks and apps that can transform marketing, prospecting and client communication.

Data connectivity is waiting in the wings, along with compliance reviews and financial and estate planning automation. Then there’s Range, the AI-based startup that had a $60 million capital raise last month. And what does Range want to do? Oh, just provide fully-automated financial planning and replace human advisors, that’s all.

Equity research is also in AI’s crosshairs and the need for legions of analysts is likely to diminish. The Financial Times predicts that active asset managers may benefit from machine learning by being able to “rebuild their value proposition around systematic, scalable and lower-cost alpha.”

No doubt there will also be surprises, and the upcoming T3 fintech conference in New Orleans in March should provide a sneak preview of AI apps to watch.

Will there be an RIA mega merger?
True, this question has become a perennial, but 2026 just might be the year when it will finally happen and transform the industry in the way private equity’s capital investment has done for the last decade.

The biggest RIAs have gotten very big, with $200 billion or so in AuM becoming table stakes. Yet the industry is still considered fragmented and there still isn’t a truly national firm with the corresponding clout and market share that would bring. A mega merger would change all that.

One school of thought believes that an IPO is more likely for firms with roughly $500 billion or more in total assets, including companies they have bought which have retirement accounts.

“Firms are getting to the size where private equity can’t write checks for recapitalization and they can’t depend on the next big PE buyer to come along, so going public is the most likely exit thesis,” the former head of a large aggregator said.

Not necessarily, said Pathstone CEO Matthew Fleissig, who maintained that there is actually still plenty of private equity money to go around. Even the largest firms can be funded by “multiple PE sponsors” at the same time, Fleissig said, which also means that they can continue to make acquisitions, even perhaps, a very big one.

2025 questions answered
Can Karl Heckenberg continue his hot streak as the minority macher – and is Joe Duran jealous?

Yes, and probably.

How far can Michael Nathanson and Adam Birenbaum take Focus Financial with a bifurcated strategy?
Only so far. Nathanson will step down as CEO in February and Birenbaum will take over, with an eye to more integration, less bifurcation.

Will we ever find out what Dan Arnold did to get fired?
Former LPL Financial CEO Arnold clearly said something he shouldn’t have, but no details have been confirmed to date.

Is Peter Mallouk gearing up for a blockbuster M&A deal?
Maybe. The Creative Planning CEO was as ambitious as ever, buying six more RIAs, a retirement plan-focused company and negotiating a reported entry into the UK.

How far out there is Ron Carson and why are all those executives leaving his company?
Carson officially changed his name to Omani this year and has kept a low industry profile, presumably focusing on building up the Omya community, whose members can partake in “ancient medicine journeys and ceremonies.”

The Carson Group, meanwhile, has done just fine despite the executive exodus last year. AuM topped $50 billion in October, and acquisitions continue apace, including a $1.45 billion RIA in Ohio last month.