Jack Martin on the WealthAdvisor Podcast: Why RIA M&A Multiples Hinge on Infrastructure

Amplify Platform Chief Marketing Officer Jack Martin joined WealthAdvisor host Scott Martin for his second appearance on the America’s Best TAMPs podcast, published May 26, 2026. The conversation covered the forces reshaping how RIA firms are built, valued, and acquired—and why infrastructure has moved from a back-office consideration to a boardroom priority.

Martin opened with an observation drawn from three decades in the industry: M&A volume in wealth management is at a level he has never seen before. Deal books from DeVoe, Mercer, and Echelon all point to the same trend—and what’s changed isn’t just the pace of transactions, it’s what buyers are paying for. AUM and organic growth remain factors, but a third variable has quietly climbed to the top of acquirers’ checklists: infrastructure. Martin noted that deal multiples vary significantly based on data integrity. “The way they’re pricing deals now isn’t the same as it was even a year or two ago,” he said. “They’re pricing firms based on AUM, of course, based on organic growth—but also based on infrastructure.”

The conversation moved through the platform capabilities that differentiate Amplify from legacy TAMP models: digital onboarding that consolidates multiple custodians and account types into a single signing ceremony, an AI-native data lake that functions as a single source of truth across every workflow, and an automated performance reporting engine that frees advisors from Monday-morning reconciliation work.

Martin also discussed QuantumRisk™—Amplify’s proprietary fat-tail risk engine—and how it travels with the client relationship from onboarding through every proposal, review, and rebalancing decision. According to Martin, one Amplify client summed up the effect: “When I sit down with a client and start to talk to them about risk, I can start to see them relax.”

Martin closed with a direct message to RIAs in the $500M–$5B range: the friction they’re starting to feel from growth is a signal, not a phase. The platform decisions made today will show up in the multiples tomorrow.

Watch Jack Martin’s full interview on The WealthAdvisor, here: https://www.thewealthadvisor.com/article/amplify-changing-what-advisors-look-platform-and-what-buyers-look-firm