Dispatch, a New York City-based data orchestration platform, has introduced Advisor Transitions, which it bills as the wealth management industry's first software purpose-built to manage the movement of advisors and client assets between firms. The launch comes as advisor mobility reaches levels not seen in years, with approximately 11,172 experienced advisors changing firms in 2025 alone, a 16.2% increase from 2024, according to Diamond Consultants' 2025 Financial Advisor Transition Report.
Rob Nance, co-founder and CEO of Dispatch, spent nearly a decade as an advisor at private banks before moving into fintech. He argues that the operational complexity of transitions has historically been a fundamental barrier to advisor freedom. “Transitions are among the most operationally complex workflows in wealth management, and until now, the industry hasn't had purpose-built software to manage them on,” Nance told InvestmentNews. “Firms have been forced to choose between a custodial program they may not qualify for and a manual process built on spreadsheets and people. We built Transitions to give them a third option.”
The friction stems from data fragmentation. As advisor technology has expanded over the past two decades, client information has become siloed across CRM systems, financial planning tools, billing platforms, and reporting software. When an advisor moves, every record must be reconciled. “You have data living in different silos. Imagine you're an advisor going from a practice you started to a larger aggregator ... That data typically doesn't live in one place,” Nance said. Additionally, advisors must navigate varying legal frameworks for data portability, from protocol moves (which permit five specific data points) to full-data portability scenarios.
Automating this workflow can yield significant operational gains. In a case study involving Sanctuary Wealth, Dispatch's software compressed complex household onboarding times from between three and eight hours to roughly 30 minutes. During one recent protocol transition, Sanctuary moved more than $200 million in client assets onto its platform in less than two weeks. Rob Gaudio, head of operations at Sanctuary Wealth, described the ROI and operational efficiency from Dispatch's technology as “incredible.”
The platform works by mapping what data each custodian requires for a given account type—such as an individual brokerage account and an IRA opened simultaneously. It then pulls existing data from the advisor's systems, identifies gaps, and generates a single, optimized client request that avoids asking for the same information twice. “If we know the address is on both applications, we're only asking for the address once,” Nance said. “By blending it together, understanding the required data, and determining the data you have, it makes it really seamless.”
Advisor Transitions generates custodial forms for client signatures, opens accounts across multiple custodians in parallel—a plus for RIAs running on multi-custodian arrangements—and keeps data synchronized across the advisor's technology stack once the transition is complete. The same software serves ongoing account-opening needs after the move. This flexibility is central to the product's design, given the varying legal frameworks governing advisor departures, from non-protocol to full-data portability scenarios.
For advisors weighing independence, Nance said the operational complexity of a move has historically been a deterrent. “Imagine you're an advisor making the decision to move your book of business. It's kind of a scary moment because there's a lot of uncertainty there. Will your clients move with you? Will it be painful for your clients to do so?” he said. “One reason advisors don't go independent is they don't want to deal with the headache of moving everything. They don't want their clients to have a bad experience.” According to the Diamond Consultants report, advisors jumping firms in 2025 had an average of 22 years in the industry, underscoring that experienced, large-book advisors are most willing to take the leap but also have the most to lose if a transition goes poorly.
The stakes were especially high for the high-profile launch of OpenArc Corporate Advisory, led by a team that previously managed approximately $129 billion in assets at Merrill Lynch. “What I would say to anybody contemplating [a breakaway], follow the rules. Wear the white hat, follow the rules, and we did,” Fletcher, chief operating officer at OpenArc, told InvestmentNews. “Protocol is an accepted industry standard that Merrill actually has led and supported when it first came out years ago, so we are simply following something that they put in place 15 or 20 years ago.” Nance said Dispatch can handle all transition scenarios, regardless of whether advisors can take no data, some data, or all of it.
Built on Dispatch's core data platform, Advisor Transitions applies proprietary algorithms to streamline data reconciliation and account opening. The company's broader platform already serves firms like Sanctuary Wealth, and the new module is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing advisor technology stacks. As the wealth management industry continues to see record advisor movement, tools like Dispatch's could become critical for firms looking to attract and retain top talent by reducing the friction of transitions. For more on how RIAs are navigating independence, see RIAs Cite Self-Governance as Key to Fiduciary Freedom, Cerulli Data Shows 27% Market Share and AI-Driven M&A Analysis Widens Gap Between Scaled Platforms and Independent RIAs.
