RIA Acquisition Integration Checklist: The Operations Playbook (2026)

Integrating an acquired RIA is mostly an operations project. Before close, operations inventories the target's stack, custodians, account types, data quality, billing method, vendor contracts and records. Between close and day 1, the firm communicates with clients, collects advisory contract consent where the deal is an assignment, and updates Form ADV. In days 1 to 90, it migrates CRM households and documents, makes the custodian decision, and converts billing and performance reporting. In days 90 to 180, it retires the target's systems, reconciles, closes out vendor contracts and measures the result.

The volume makes this a standing job rather than a one-off. ECHELON Partners counted 120 announced RIA transactions in the second quarter of 2026, after a record 142 in the first quarter (ECHELON Partners Q2 2026 RIA M&A Deal Report). If your firm is an acquirer, the integration playbook is something you will run again, so it is worth writing down and worth making repeatable.

This checklist is written from the operations seat. It is not legal advice: consent strategy, regulatory filings and client disclosures are calls for your CCO and counsel. If you are onboarding an individual advisor rather than a firm, the breakaway advisor transition checklist covers that shape of the work.

Before close: diligence from the operations seat

Financial and legal diligence will happen without you. Operational diligence often does not, and it is where the integration budget and timeline are really set. Ask for these before signing, not after:

1. Technology stack. CRM (Salesforce, Wealthbox, Redtail, Practifi or something else), portfolio management and reporting, financial planning, document management, e-signature, trading and rebalancing. Get the admin contacts and whether exports are available in bulk.
2. Custodians and account types. Which custodians hold the assets, how many accounts sit at each, and the mix of account types: individual, joint, IRA, inherited IRA, trust, entity, retirement plan, 529. Trusts and entities generate the most paperwork exceptions later.
3. Data quality. Pull a sample CRM export and check it yourself: households versus individual contacts, duplicate records, missing dates of birth and addresses, beneficiary data, how relationships between people are recorded. This one check predicts most of your migration effort.
4. Billing method. AUM tiers, flat fees, household aggregation rules, billing in advance or arrears, the billing system of record, and any client with a non-standard fee. Ask for the fee schedule attached to each advisory agreement, not just the firm standard.
5. Open service requests. Pending transfers, distributions, account openings and address changes that will be in flight on closing day. Someone has to own each one through the handoff.
6. Vendor contracts and termination terms. Every software and data contract, its renewal date, notice period and termination fee. This list drives the day-180 retirement plan and prevents paying for a system nobody uses.
7. Books and records location. Where the records the target is required to keep actually live: email archive, document system, CRM notes, shared drives, paper. Advisers keep books and records under Advisers Act Rule 204-2, so the plan for who holds the target's historical records after close is a compliance question as much as an IT one.
8. Advisory agreements. Collect the current agreement templates and a count of clients on each version. The assignment and consent language in those agreements shapes the day-1 plan. See the investment advisory agreement guide for what these typically contain.

Close to day 1: consent, communication and filings

This is the phase with the least room for error, because it touches the advisory relationship itself.

Advisory contract assignment and client consent

Section 205(a)(2) of the Investment Advisers Act says a registered adviser cannot enter into an advisory contract that "fails to provide, in substance, that no assignment of such contract shall be made by the investment adviser without the consent of the other party to the contract" (15 U.S.C. 80b-5). Section 202(a)(1) defines assignment to include a direct or indirect transfer "of a controlling block of the assignor's outstanding voting securities" (15 U.S.C. 80b-2). So a change of control can be an assignment that requires client consent, even when the client keeps the same advisor.

Firms commonly collect that consent in one of two ways, depending on the contract language, the account types and counsel's view:

• Positive consent: the client signs a consent or a new advisory agreement. Clear evidence, but every unsigned client is an open item.
• Negative consent: the client is notified and deemed to consent unless they object within a stated period. Fewer signatures, but the notice, the delivery record and every objection have to be tracked.

Which one applies, to which clients, is counsel's decision. The operations job is the tracking: one row per client showing what was sent, when, how it was delivered, and what came back. That list is the evidence your CCO will ask for.

Client communication

• Announcement: advisor-led calls for top relationships, then a written notice for everyone, reviewed by compliance.
• What changes and what does not: the advisor, the custodian, the portal, the statements, the fee. Clients mostly want to know whether they have to do anything.
• Service coverage: who answers the phone on day 1 and where requests go while systems are still split.

Form ADV and disclosures

The acquiring firm's Form ADV will usually need updating for new offices, personnel, ownership or assets, and the target may withdraw its own registration if it is folded in. The SEC's Form ADV instructions set out which changes require an amendment and when. Your CCO owns the filing; operations usually owns the data that feeds it, such as account counts and AUM by custodian.

Days 1 to 90: migration and conversion

This is where the hours go. Run each workstream against a written cutover date and a named owner.

1. CRM data migration. Map the target's export to your household model before importing anything: households, contacts, relationships, accounts, service teams, notes and open tasks. Match against existing records first, because some of the target's clients may already be in your CRM as prospects or family members of current clients.
2. Custodian decision. If the target is on the same custodian, accounts may be able to move under your firm's master account with lighter paperwork; confirm the process with the custodian. If not, clients sign new account applications and transfer forms, which is a repapering project in its own right. See RIA client repapering, custodian account opening forms and ACAT transfer of assets.
3. Billing conversion. Load each client's fee schedule from the signed agreement into your billing system, then run a parallel bill: the target's last invoice against what your system would have produced. Every difference is either a data error or a fee decision.
4. Performance reporting conversion. Moving accounts into Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac or Addepar means deciding how much history to bring, how cost basis carries over, and how performance is linked across the conversion date. Tell clients in advance if their first report from your firm will look different.
5. Document migration. Move client files into your document system (Box, SharePoint, Egnyte or similar) in your folder structure and naming convention, not the target's. Advisory agreements, account paperwork, IPS documents and planning files come first.
6. Access and permissions. Provision incoming staff into your systems with role-based access, and set an end date for their access to the target's old systems. Keep a list of every account created and removed.
7. Books and records. Decide, with the CCO, where the target's historical records will be kept and how they will be retrieved on request. Test a retrieval before you turn anything off.

Days 90 to 180: retire, reconcile, close out, measure

• Retire the target's systems in the order the vendor contract list allows, after exporting and archiving what the records plan says you must keep.
• Reconcile: accounts in the CRM against accounts at the custodian, billing against agreements, documents on file against the required document list for each account.
• Close out vendor contracts by their notice dates. Missing one usually means another year of fees.
• Measure: client retention, assets retained, open exceptions, NIGO rate on paperwork, and hours your team spent. The next integration plan starts from these numbers.

Integration workstreams: owner, automation, human judgment

Where integrations fail, and the control for each

• NIGO paperwork. Custodian forms come back not in good order because a field is missing, a signature is in the wrong place or the account type does not match the form. Control: fill forms from one source record, check required fields per form and account type before anything is sent, and track every rejection reason so the checks improve. More in how to auto-fill custodian forms.
• Duplicate households. The import creates a second household for a family already in your CRM. Control: match on name, date of birth, address and account number before creating anything, and route every probable match to a person.
• Billing mismatches. A client is billed the firm standard instead of the fee in their signed agreement. Control: the parallel bill, with every difference cleared before the first real invoice.
• Missed consents. A client never signed, or their objection was not recorded. Control: one consent tracker per client, reconciled against the client list, reviewed by the CCO before the consent period ends.
• Lost documents. Signed agreements or account paperwork stay on the target's drive and are deleted when it is retired. Control: a required-document list per account, and a missing-document report cleared before any system is turned off.

Where automation helps in an RIA integration

An integration is a burst of the same back-office work your team already does, at far higher volume and on a deadline. The steps that repeat per client are the ones worth automating:

• Paperwork prefill from the CRM record: consent forms, new advisory agreements, custodian account applications and transfer forms filled from the household in Salesforce, Wealthbox or Practifi.
• DocuSign send and track: packets sent through DocuSign, status written back to the CRM, and a daily list of who has not signed.
• CRM household creation from a source file: the target's export turned into households and contacts in your model, with probable duplicates held for review.
• Document filing: signed documents saved to the right client folder with the right name.
• Exception lists: unsigned consents, billing mismatches, missing documents and accounts in the CRM without a match, delivered to the person who clears them.

Where Caddi fits, and where it does not

Caddi is built for this kind of work. With Caddi Automate, someone on your operations team screen-shares the process or describes it in chat, and Caddi builds the automation; when the process changes, they change it in plain English. AI builds it, verified code runs it, and any model step inside a run is scoped, logged, and reviewable. Govern gives the firm a view of every run, which is the record your CCO will want after a large consent or repapering push.

Specifically, Caddi fills custodian paperwork such as new account applications and transfer forms from the CRM household record, sends it for signature through DocuSign, and logs it back to the CRM. It also creates CRM records from source files, files documents to Box, SharePoint or Egnyte, and produces the exception lists above.

What it does not do: Caddi does not connect to custodian platforms, so portal work and custodian-side exception handling stay with your team. It does not decide your consent strategy, your fee schedules or your Form ADV disclosures. And it is not a meeting note taker.

The payoff compounds because integrations repeat. On average, teams get 150 hours automated for every 1 hour spent teaching Caddi, and it takes 45 minutes on average to build the first agent. The automations you build for one tuck-in are there for the next. For the wider picture of the operations role, see the RIA director of operations guide; for how these systems fit together, see the RIA tech stack hub; and for the onboarding workflow that most of this reuses, see client onboarding.

More for RIA operations leaders

• The Wealth Advisory COO's Guide to AI
• What a Director of Operations at an RIA owns
• The RIA operations tech stack, by workflow
• Client repapering without the NIGO
• Onboarding a breakaway advisor team

Caddi connects to the systems an RIA back office runs on: Salesforce, Wealthbox, Practifi, Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac, Addepar, DocuSign, Jump, Zocks. See how it runs client onboarding and the operational side of RIA compliance, or the RIA operations overview.