Three ways Flourish Cash helps firms drive organic growth

July 8, 2025

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Today, more than 1,000 RIAs use Flourish Cash,^† providing clients with a valuable held-away cash solution that gives advisors visibility into their clients’ cash position.^∆ While most firms initially sign up for Flourish Cash in order to provide more value to clients, advisors increasingly think of Flourish Cash as a powerful tool for driving organic growth.

While organic growth means different things to different firms, our firms typically think of organic growth in three ways:

1. Flourish Cash deposits are sourced from banks, helping firms increase share of wallet per client—and a portion of those deposits eventually wind up moving into brokerage accounts
2. Assessing service fees on Flourish Cash accounts can increase revenue per client^∫∫
3. Flourish Cash serves as a unique business development tool

Numerous studies surveying high net worth investors directly indicate that high net worth clients hold 20% or more of their wealth in cash,¹ the vast majority of which is “held-away” from advisors — cash that is typically sitting in checking and savings accounts at banks, often earning virtually nothing. All too often, this cash is outside the purview of financial advisors, leaving clients vulnerable to competitors (e.g., private banks, wirehouses) and limiting advisors’ ability to provide comprehensive advice about this essential asset.

Many advisors react with some degree of skepticism to the 20%+ held-away cash figure, but our own data confirms this number. To take one representative data point, households with a self-reported net worth of $1-2M currently have average Flourish Cash balances of $218k,² showing just how much cash is on the sidelines — with top firms reaching 5-10+% of their regulatory AUM in Flourish Cash balances.

Perhaps more interestingly to many advisors, Flourish Cash can be viewed as an asset gathering tool from banks. The data is unambiguous: on net, Flourish Cash has contributed ~$528M more to brokerage accounts than we’ve received from brokerage accounts.³

We currently have more than $7.4B in the program. This means that Flourish Cash has received NET ~$7.9+B from bank accounts and has sent NET ~$528M to brokerage accounts. Internally, we sometimes like to say that Flourish Cash has “created” a mid-sized RIA in terms of sending funds to brokerage accounts.

It’s critical to note that there are many times that amount of gross deposits and withdrawals in both directions: on net, elderly clients may tend to transfer funds from brokerage to Flourish Cash, while younger accumulators on net tend to transfer from Flourish Cash to brokerage. Although modest in percentage terms, this is a core way that Flourish Cash can drive organic growth: Flourish Cash is an asset-gathering tool from banks, with a small but meaningful sum being sent to brokerage accounts.

While completely optional, Flourish has developed multiple revenue opportunities for firms that wish to directly assess fees on Flourish Cash balances. We have previously shared two of these programs:

Advisor Service Fees: Advisory firms can apply an asset-based service fee on the assets that clients deposit in Flourish Cash accounts, which is automatically collected from the interest earned by clients each month.

Advisor Billing: Advisory firms can have Flourish collect standard advisory fees from clients’ Flourish Cash balances, similar to typical advisory billing arrangements.

To provide an illustrative example, assume a $1B firm reaches $100M in Flourish Cash balances, which represents what we refer to as “phenomenal penetration with Flourish Cash.” If that firm assesses a 0.25% service fee or advisory fee on Flourish Cash balances, the firm would generate an extra $250,000 / year from Flourish Cash balances. Depending on the firm’s fee schedule (e.g., assuming a blended average advisory fee of 0.70%), that firm could easily expand revenue by 3-4% from Flourish Cash alone — all while adding true value to clients, as well as discovering funds that could be moved to the portfolio. 

Many of our firms use Flourish Cash to drive prospecting and business development efforts, another form of organic growth. Cash is a lightweight way to add value to prospective clients of the firm, which can apply to:

• True prospects
• Business owners
• The children and grandchildren of current clients
• 401k plan sponsors/executive
• Non-profit board members
• And more
  
  

We recently published an article on this topic, which is also discussed in a number of our case studies. 

Around 85-90% of our firms choose to brand Flourish Cash with their logo. The next time you are working with a prospect who has cash on the sidelines but isn’t quite ready to move forward with an advisory relationship, just imagine having “The Cash Conversation,” then having that prospect log into a value-add solution with your logo on it.

First and foremost, advisors utilize Flourish Cash to add value to clients, giving them access to a cash solution that helps them earn more while ensuring that high balances are covered by FDIC insurance through our Program Banks.^Ω Firms tap into an additional benefit when they drive organic growth through the strategic use of Flourish to: 

• Send excess cash reserves to the managed portfolio
• Increase firm revenue from service fees on cash 
• Expand business development and prospecting efforts

At our heart, Flourish has always focused on providing more ways for advisors to holistically serve their clients and gain a competitive edge as they are both empowered to offer valuable client solutions and open new avenues for firm growth. Beyond cash management, the Flourish Annuities^∫ Outsourced Insurance Desk enables advisors to harness the unique ability of annuities to expand portfolio options – all while creating the potential to increase AUM.

Our recent acquisition of SoraFinance will accelerate plans to add a complementary lending arm to Flourish, filling a critical void in the advisor toolkit and better enabling RIAs to compete with banks and wirehouses. As always, we are guided by advisor feedback and encourage you to reach out to your account manager to learn more about how you can tap into growth opportunities with Flourish.

About Flourish

Flourish builds technology that empowers financial advisors, improves financial lives and retirement outcomes, and delivers new and innovative investment options to advisors. Today, the Flourish platform is used by more than 1,000 wealth management firms representing more than $2.6 trillion in assets under management. Flourish is wholly-owned by MassMutual. For more information, visit www.flourish.com.