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January 27, 2022 at 07:10 PM
What You Need to Know
- The retail segment of professionally managed assets accounts for 49% of the total.
- Institutional investors are increasingly reliant on intermediaries, including financial advisors.
- RIAs had the fastest growth among retail intermediaries.
U.S. professionally managed assets grew by 10.7% in 2020 to $59.3 trillion, according to research released Thursday by Cerulli Associates.
Total assets now boast a 10-year compound annual growth rate of 8%.
Most addressable assets reside in the institutional channel. The biggest client segments are insurance general accounts; corporate 401(k) plans, and state and local government defined benefit plans. Assets in these segments, respectively, total $7.3 trillion, $6.9 trillion and $4.5 trillion.
Collectively, these three channels comprise more than 60% of the total institutional addressable market.
The retail segment of professionally managed assets accounts for 49% of the total, according to the report. The two largest retail client segments, retail direct investor platforms and the wirehouses, experienced 13.7% asset growth in 2020, to $6.9 trillion and $5.5 trillion.
The report said, however, that the retail direct investor platform channel has been growing faster in recent years. It has a 16.8% five-year compound annual growth rate, compared with 9.5% for the wirehouses.
Most of the U.S. retail and institutional professionally managed assets move through a third-party intermediary, according to the report. Institutional intermediaries accounted for 53% of institutional channel assets as of year-end 2020.
