BNY Pershing and Goldman Sachs Ayco are entering the client custodial referral market, a space previously dominated by Charles Schwab and Fidelity Investments, with further competitors likely to join the fray in 2026.

BNY Pershing’s program is scheduled to launch later this year under the name the BNY Advisor Match Service, according to the company and a regulatory filing from Dec. 26. The program will put up “one or two” advisor referrals to clients upon request based on criteria set up by the custodian, according to the filing. 

Goldman Sachs Ayco, which specializes in financial and retirement planning for C-suite executives and employees at Fortune 500 companies, has already started a referral program with Creative Planning, Mercer Advisors and Wealth Enhancement, according to the registered investment advisors, which are among the largest in the United States.

BNY Pershing, Betterment, Altruist and Robinhood, which acquired custodian TradePMR in 2024, have all forecast starting advisor client referral programs. Financial Advisor IQ first reported on BNY Pershing’s pending program, Citywire first reported on Mercer and Wealth Enhancement’s Ayco filings, and Investment News first reported on Creative Planning’s inclusion.

Amy DeTolla, who consults RIAs as founder and CEO of Aureus Advantage, said the two referral programs will have different client bases, which will likely impact the types of RIAs that use the program.

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“For Ayco, it seems the referrals will come from their executive financial consulting relationships, and those clients are going to be very complex,” she said. “When you think about what firms can benefit from this, you’ve got to have the scale to be able to handle those types of complex clients—out of the gate, it makes sense Ayco would tend to work with bigger RIAs.”

On the BNY Pershing side, DeTolla said smaller firms might be part of the program, but they will need to be cautious about the types of clients they anticipate getting.

“The leads that will come from there will be good, but it’s hard to know what type of client will come through,” she said. “This is also a lot of cost for a smaller firm, so it will be interesting to see how BNY’s matching program works.”

BNY Pershing, which already has a website for the program that says “Coming soon!”, positioned the program as a “digital-first” option for advisors.

“As the world’s largest custodian, BNY has a unique opportunity to match advisors and investors across our ecosystem,” Ben Harrison, global head of client coverage, said in a statement. “We plan to launch BNY Advisor Match later this year—a digital-first referral program that will help BNY Pershing clients scale organic growth through a new channel of qualified leads as more investors seek financial advice.”

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In its filing, the firm said current or prospective clients seeking advisor referrals would get “one or more” referrals from the custodian among RIAs with client accounts with Pershing Advisor Solutions. The advisors must meet certain criteria, including charging fee-based, asset-based or flat-rate advisory service fees.

Participating RIAs will pay BNY an annual $50,000 participation fee and an annual asset-based fee of up to 0.30% “based on the value of the assets in a referred client’s accounts opened or maintained with PAS and custodied at Pershing,” according to the filing. The referred client does not pay a fee, and BNY wrote in the filing that the RIA fees for the program cannot be passed on to the client.

Goldman Sachs Ayco, which declined to comment on the filings, is separate from the firm’s Goldman Sachs Advisor Solutions custodial program, which the New York-based asset manager started in 2020 and over the years has gained traction among RIAs such as Creative Planning, and includes last year being brought on by Dynasty Financial Partners’ network of over 500 advisors. 

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In terms of the Goldman Sachs Ayco referral program, Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk said via email that his firm had “been talking with Goldman about this program for over a year and are excited to see it launching. Early indications are positive, and we look forward to growing with them.”

According to Mercer’s client brochure filing, the RIA will pay Ayco a referral fee if the referred clients “do not pay a higher advisory fee” than “had the client engaged” the RIA directly. The filing also notes that the referred clients may be offered the option to use affiliated Goldman Sachs services, including custody and clearing services, deposit services and lending products. The clients, however, will not be under any obligation to use those services, so as to avoid a “conflict of interest,” according to the filing.

“We are committed to supporting the Goldman Ayco business in making independent fiduciary advice available to a broader range of the corporate professionals they support,” a Mercer spokesperson said in an email. “This is consistent with our firm’s mission of making family office support available to a wide spectrum of families.”

In its filing, Wealth Enhancement wrote that it pays a referral fee to Goldman Sachs Ayco, which is a “percentage of the value of the assets under management for clients referred through the arrangement.” The RIA does not pass the fees to the client, according to the filing, but it noted the situation may create conflicts of interest because Wealth Enhancement “has an incentive to retain referred clients’ accounts and encourage growth in those accounts.”

In addition, the filing noted that Goldman Sachs Ayco may have an incentive to refer clients to Wealth Enhancement due to its “familiarity with investment products, strategies and services provided by Goldman Sachs Ayco and its affiliates.”

“We look forward to serving additional clients through this program while continuing to maintain strong relationships with our existing referral partners,” a Wealth Enhancement spokesperson said via email. “This partnership also underscores Wealth Enhancement’s commitment to providing our advisors with access to diversified growth channels.”

Abby Salameh, an RIA consultant and former chief growth officer for Birmingham, Ala.-based RFG Advisory, said she would expect the Ayco program to be “incredibly lucrative” for the RIAs participating. Overall, however, she cautioned firms from relying too much on referral programs. 

“Most RIAs are relying upon referrals from programs like this up to 40%-50% of their organic growth,” she said. “It’s not ideal because the referrals are very expensive—pay basis points on perpetuity of the client—but rather than reduce that percentage or reliance, it is important for the RIA to diversify their growth from other ways, [such as] organically through community activities, direct marketing, etc.” 

DeTolla of Aureus said client referral programs, while valuable, should only be one part of an organic growth strategy for RIAs.

“Referral programs help provide some predictability of organic growth, but firms need to use them as one input in a broader diversified organic growth engine,” she said. “You really need to also work on your digital marketing, your own client referrals, and COIs (centers of influence).”  

DeTolla said she has seen firms rely solely on referral programs in the past, only to be burned when they were kicked out of the program or when parameters changed. 

Last year, Schwab increased the assets under management for its Schwab Advisor Network from $250 million to $500 million, marking the first changes to the program since its inception in 2002. 

It also announced an increase in the minimum client asset threshold for the referral program from $500,000 to $2 million. That will, in effect, reduce the refer pool to the roughly 100 to 150 RIAs that participate in the program at any given time.

Fidelity Wealth Management advisors work with clients on financial planning and investing, and then identify and make introductions to advisors as needed through its Wealth Advisor Solutions program. That WAS program has been operating for more than two decades and currently has 67 RIAs in the referral program, according to the firm.