Fidelity's new minimum asset requirement for RIAs on its custody platform has sparked a bigger conversation: is staying small still a sustainable choice? The pressure goes well beyond one custodian. Compliance, technology, cybersecurity and insurance costs keep climbing, and small firms must spread them across limited revenue. Owners who also run operations, compliance and tech have less time for clients and almost none for building a steady growth engine. Scale, once a nice advantage, is increasingly seen as a business necessity. The stakes reach enterprise value too, since buyers tend to pay less for firms with concentrated risk, thin infrastructure and flat growth. One proposed answer is partnering with a larger platform to share resources while keeping a name and client relationships. The message is worth weighing carefully, since the author sells that very model, but the underlying question about long term value is one every independent owner should be asking.

Finsum: Independence and smallness are no longer the same thing, and the owners who plan deliberately for scale, whether by growing, merging or partnering, will be best placed when the next rule change arrives.