Many financial advisors set up shop in their hometown. Others, especially those who work for the large national brokerages, flock to big cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, where the high populations provide a healthy crop of prospective clients.
Aside from those big cities, what are the best places in the U.S. for financial advisors to find leads and grow organically?
The list may surprise you. For instance, Dayton, Ohio, landed in the top spot for having the highest number of people seeking advisors relative to its population. Based on the raw number of leads coming out of the city, Dayton ranked 47th out of 339 cities.
The list was compiled by SmartAsset, based on data from the financial tech company’s Advisor Marketing Platform, AMP, launched earlier this year. That represents people who requested to be matched with an advisor via SmartAsset’s tool.
SmartAsset ranked 339 cities in the U.S. with populations of 100,000 or more for which data was available. The ranking of the 10 cities here are those with the highest number of leads relative to the local population size.
The company also ranked the top cities by raw number of leaders coming in, with Houston taking the top spot on that list, followed by New York, Chicago and San Diego, Calif.
Income data from the latest U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (2022).