Largest investment companies: the biggest asset managers by assets under management

This list is for sellers, analysts and job seekers who need a sourced ranking of the world's biggest asset managers and want to know what each figure measures. It ranks firms by the assets under management (AUM) in their annual report for 2025, mostly at December 31, 2025, and then covers the privately held giants, Vanguard, Fidelity and Capital Group, from the figures they file with the SEC.

The largest asset managers that publish annual reports

Figures are as each firm's 10-K, 20-F or annual results release states them. The euro figure is converted at the Federal Reserve's 2025 average of $1.1306 per euro (G.5A, 5 January 2026). Franklin Templeton's year ends September 30; its 10-K for the year to September 2026 wasn't filed by 30 October 2026. Where an asset manager is one division of a bank or insurer, the employee count shown is for the whole company, because the filing doesn't give one for the division.

What sits behind the different labels:

• AUM is money the firm manages with investment discretion. Northern Trust's $1,803.2 billion includes $207.8 billion of securities lending collateral; Amundi's includes advisory assets, funds of funds and 100% of its Asian joint ventures.
• Assets under supervision (Goldman Sachs) is assets it manages for a fee on a discretionary basis, and its liquidity products include money market funds and private bank deposits.
• Invested assets (UBS) is the Swiss banks' measure; UBS Asset Management's $2,098 billion includes $601 billion managed for UBS's own wealth clients.
• Client assets add custody, brokerage and deposits. JPMorgan's $7,118 billion and BNY's $59.3 trillion under custody or administration are not money they manage.

PIMCO, part of Germany's Allianz group, would rank near the top of this table: its site says it managed $2.29 trillion, including $1.90 trillion for third-party clients, at September 30, 2026. Allianz's own results pages refused our automated request, so its group figure isn't shown.

Vanguard, Fidelity and the other privately held giants

Vanguard, Fidelity and Capital Group publish no annual report, and Vanguard's own facts page gives no AUM. Every US-registered adviser does report its regulatory assets under management on Form ADV, which the SEC publishes monthly. These are the largest privately held managers in the October 2026 file:

Source: SEC, Registered Investment Advisers, October 2026 file, Item 5.F(2)(c) and Item 5.A of each adviser's latest Form ADV. The employee count is the adviser entity's, not the group's.

Read these as approximate. Each row is one adviser, not the whole group: Vanguard's two other large advisers report $8.44 trillion and $2.66 trillion, and the filings don't say how much overlaps with the $11.09 trillion, so we don't add them. Regulatory AUM can also exceed what the firm itself reports: Capital Group's own site says "$3.6T+ AUM" at June 30, 2026, below its adviser's $4.32 trillion on Form ADV. Funds that invest in the same firm's other funds are a common cause of double counting.

On these figures, Vanguard is the second-largest asset manager in the world and Fidelity and Capital Group sit around State Street and JPMorgan.

How big the field is

The SEC's October 2026 file lists 17,210 registered investment advisers. By the regulatory AUM each reports:

Our counts from the SEC file. The figures overlap where one adviser sub-advises for another, so the total across advisers overstates the money managed.

So about 1,100 advisers fall between $10 billion and $100 billion. That middle band, not the top 20, is where most sellers to asset managers find their pipeline.

How we built the list

1. Who counts. Firms whose main business, or a reported division, is managing money for clients, with a 2025 annual report filed or published by 30 October 2026. Brokerage and wealth platforms that report client assets but not AUM, such as Edward Jones and LPL, are left out.
2. What's counted. The headline AUM figure exactly as each firm labels it, at its fiscal year-end. Where a bank reports both AUM and client assets, we rank on AUM.
3. Currency. Euros at $1.1306, the Federal Reserve's 2025 average.
4. Private firms. Form ADV regulatory AUM for the main adviser, shown separately because the measure differs.
5. Checking. We opened every filing and data file. Some widely cited rankings put a company-reported total for one firm next to a single adviser's Form ADV figure for another: the "$5,685,041,930,529" often quoted for Fidelity is exactly its main adviser's Form ADV figure, not a group total. Pensions & Investments and the Thinking Ahead Institute publish annual rankings from their own surveys, with their own dates and definitions.

What the list is good for if you sell B2B

Segment before you prospect. The firms above fall into five groups that buy differently: index and ETF giants (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Geode, Dimensional), active managers (Capital Group, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, Franklin, Wellington, Dodge & Cox), bank-owned managers (JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNY, UBS, Northern Trust), insurer-owned managers (PGIM, Ameriprise's Columbia Threadneedle) and alternatives firms (Blackstone, Brookfield, Apollo, KKR).

Know the four buyers. General guidance, not drawn from the filings. Inside an asset manager, budgets usually sit with investment teams (data, research, analytics), distribution (CRM, sales enablement, marketing to advisors and consultants), operations and technology (trading, data management, reconciliation) and compliance. Each has its own leader and its own renewals, and at bank-owned managers the parent's procurement and vendor risk teams usually join the deal.

Size the account from the filing. Headcount tells you more about seat-based deals than AUM does: Invesco's about 7,500 employees and T. Rowe Price's 7,773 manage $2.17 trillion and $1.78 trillion. The account research guide covers what to pull from a 10-K before the first call, and our list of the largest private equity firms covers the alternatives side in more depth.

Worked example

Illustrative example. Fundline (fundline.example) sells a distribution analytics tool to asset managers at an illustrative $60,000 a year for firms with $10 billion to $100 billion of assets. Its seller builds the market from the SEC file:

• Target band: 1,371 advisers with $10 billion or more, minus 261 with $100 billion or more, leaves 1,110.
• Fit filter: the seller keeps advisers that manage mainly mutual funds or ETFs sold through intermediaries, which the seller estimates at an illustrative 20%, or about 222 firms.
• Market: 222 x $60,000 = about $13.3 million a year if every one bought.

The seller then sorts the 222 by headcount on Form ADV, targets the head of distribution or sales operations, and opens with a fund family's recent outflows from its own reports. Researching each firm's products and flows is the slow part; Bebop does it for every account in a list like this.

Next step: before contacting a bank-owned manager, map the parent's buying process with the enterprise account research guide.