Ameriprise Financial (AMP) Q3 2026 earnings review
Ameriprise underlying wealth inflows rise, while fund outflows widen
Ameriprise Financial, the wealth manager and parent of Columbia Threadneedle funds, grew operating profit as rising fee revenues outweighed a one-time partner bank exit. Excluding its annual insurance assumption review, revenue rose 10% and profit per share jumped 22% with help from share buybacks. While the end of the Comerica Bank partnership pulled $14 billion out of wealth accounts by our math, underlying client inflows rose 56% and chief executive Jim Cracchiolo expanded the incoming Huntington Bank partnership to $32 billion.
| Wealth client net inflows, excluding Comerica | $5.3B +56% from a year ago (reported: -$8.5B) |
|---|---|
| Operating net revenue, excluding unlocking | $5.07B +10% from a year ago |
| Operating profit per share, excluding unlocking | $12.07 +22% from a year ago |
| Full-year tax and Asset Management cost outlook | Unchanged 20–22% tax rate; flat underlying fund overhead |
⚖️ Verdict: 🟢 Bullish
The story got better because Ameriprise cleared the Comerica exit with accelerating underlying wealth inflows and a larger incoming asset pipeline from Huntington. In addition, the company backed its cash generation with a new $5.5 billion buyback plan and expanded its Asset Management margin bynearly 4 percentage points. One caution: outflows in the fund management unit widened to $9 billion, and a third-quarter stock market dip reduced wrap account balances slightly from June.
The question now is whether wealth revenue can keep growing at a double-digit pace if equity markets flatten out over the next year. One view is that the $32 billion Huntington transfer and higher advisor productivity will carry growth; the other is that recent fee gains mostly reflected a 19% higher stock market average while underlying organic inflows still trail the 4% to 5% target. Fourth-quarter client inflows and wrap asset balances will show how much Huntington adds.
🐂 Bull Case
Huntington Deal Expanded and Underlying Flows Improved
Ameriprise runs a financial institutions channel that provides wealth management products to bank customers. When its partnership with Comerica Bank ended this quarter, departing advisors took $13.8 billion of client assets with them by our math, pushing reported client flows to negative $8.5 billion. Stripping out that one-time exit shows what the ongoing business did.
- Client net inflows excluding Comerica: $5.3 billion, up 56% from a year ago
- Wrap net inflows excluding Comerica (advisory accounts billed a recurring fee): $6.6 billion, up 38%
- Experienced advisors recruited: 79 in the quarter
- Huntington Bank assets moving to Ameriprise: raised to about $32 billion from $28 billion
Chief executive Jim Cracchiolo said the firm "welcomed more than 250 advisors from Huntington Bank" in October, and added 29 more advisors managing nearly $4 billion "that joined Huntington through their acquisition of Cadence Bank and will come onto our platform in mid-2027". Because the Comerica outflows are now finished, these incoming bank assets will add directly to reported client flows starting in the fourth quarter.
What to watch: fourth-quarter client net inflows in the wealth segment. A reading above $18 billion would confirm that the first wave of Huntington assets arrived on schedule while underlying organic inflows held steady.
Core Wealth Fees Outgrew Flat Cash Earnings
In Advice & Wealth Management, Ameriprise earns core fees from managing client portfolios and interest spread income on client cash held in its bank and certificate products. Core distribution earnings grew more than 20% from a year ago and made up the majority of segment profit. Cracchiolo said investments in advisor tools, including "thoughtfully integrating AI, are driving high engagement, practice growth, strong client activity and solid underlying flows".
Advisory fees jumped 18% to $1.97 billion and trailing 12-month revenue per advisor rose 13% to $1.24 million. That fee growth overcame a 5% drop in segment net investment income to $461 million as fixed-rate certificate balances shrank 18% to $7.35 billion. Meanwhile, Ameriprise Bank grew its assets 2% to $24.7 billion and increased its earnings by a mid-single-digit percentage.
What to watch: wealth segment net investment income and advisory fees next quarter. Continued double-digit fee growth alongside stable bank interest income would show that lower interest rates are not hurting wealth margins.
Buybacks and a New $5.5B Plan Cut Share Count 6.5%
Ameriprise turns most of its operating profit into share buybacks and dividends. In the third quarter, the financial group returned $1.03 billion to shareholders, including $871 million in share repurchases. That payout equalled 93% of operating earnings excluding unlocking (the annual insurance assumption review), topping the 85% to 90% full-year target range management set earlier this year.
Those repurchases lowered the diluted share count by 6.5% from a year ago to 91.4 million shares. Because each remaining share claims a larger piece of the business, a 14% rise in operating profit excluding one-offs turned into 22% profit growth per share. Management also announced a new $5.5 billion repurchase authorization running through September 2028.
What to watch: fourth-quarter share repurchases and the diluted share count. Buying back another $800 million or more would keep per-share profit growing roughly 6 percentage points faster than net income.
Expense Discipline Lifted Asset Management Margin to 45.7%
In Asset Management, Ameriprise tracks net pretax operating margin, which strips out pass-through distribution costs paid to third-party brokers. That margin expanded by 3.6 percentage points from a year ago to 45.7%, and pretax operating profit rose 18% to $308 million. General and administrative overhead rose only 2% to $394 million, falling by 6.3 percentage points as a share of net revenue by our math.
The company said the small overhead increase came from "higher compensation expense for Seligman from AUM growth and performance", referring to its technology investment team. Management did not mention whether its back-office transition with State Street finished at the end of the third quarter as previously planned, but cost discipline is already lifting segment profitability.
What to watch: fourth-quarter Asset Management general and administrative expenses. Keeping overhead near $395 million outside of performance bonuses would confirm that back-office savings are holding.
🐻 Bear Case
Stock Market Pullback Cut Quarterly Wrap Assets
Cracchiolo credited technology and advisor tools for "driving high engagement, practice growth, strong client activity and solid underlying flows". Yet the wealth division's main revenue engine still depends heavily on stock market levels. Ameriprise bills advisory fees monthly based on the prior month's asset balances, and average equity indices were 19% higher than a year ago.
During the third quarter itself, however, market depreciation and other adjustments reduced wrap account balances by $7.46 billion. That drop outweighed $4.85 billion of net client inflows, causing total wrap assets to shrink slightly from $731.5 billion in June to $728.9 billion in September. In addition, underlying wrap inflows of $6.6 billion excluding Comerica represent a 3.6% annualized organic growth rate by our math, below the company's historical 4% to 5% target.
What to watch: monthly equity market averages and fourth-quarter wrap market appreciation. Because fourth-quarter comparisons against last year's rally are tougher, a flat or falling stock market would quickly slow fee revenue growth.
Asset Management Outflows Widened to $9.3 Billion
Columbia Threadneedle, Ameriprise's global fund management arm, has now recorded net client withdrawals in six of the last seven quarters. Total net outflows across managed and advised assets widened to $9.3 billion in the third quarter, compared with $3.4 billion a year ago and $6.5 billion in the second quarter.
Institutional clients pulled $5.5 billion net, which the company said was "primarily related to client asset allocation decisions". Retail funds lost $2.9 billion net, including $0.8 billion from closed insurance blocks, with the rest reflecting "industry pressure on active managers". While newer exchange-traded funds and model portfolios brought in $2.4 billion, those wins were too small to offset traditional fund redemptions, leaving total segment assets down 2% from June at $742.6 billion.
What to watch: fourth-quarter institutional and retail net flows in Asset Management. Another outflow worse than $6 billion would continue to drag on management fee growth heading into 2027.
Annuity Outflows and Assumption Updates Weighed on Insurance
Every third quarter, Ameriprise reviews the long-term assumptions behind its life insurance and annuity reserves, a process called unlocking. This year's review resulted in a $74 million after-tax operating charge, or $0.81 per share, compared with a $5 million charge a year ago. The company attributed the charge to "modest updates to our policyholder behavior assumptions", whereas last year benefited from a one-time model change.
Even excluding unlocking, pretax operating earnings in Retirement & Protection Solutions edged down 1% from a year ago to $198 million. Customers pulled $1.32 billion net from variable annuities, up from $1.13 billion a year ago, as older policies with living-benefit guarantees continued to run off. Strong sales of newer structured annuities, which rose 24% to $1.8 billion, also raised upfront advisor commission expenses.
What to watch: fourth-quarter pretax operating earnings in Retirement & Protection Solutions. A reading below $195 million would show that high-fee variable annuity withdrawals are outpacing new structured annuity profits.
Risks this quarter didn't answer
Several standing questions from prior quarters could not be checked in the third-quarter earnings release.
- Advisor headcount and attrition: Ameriprise reported hiring 79 experienced advisors, but total advisor count and departures remain undisclosed since early 2025.
- Core versus cash wealth profit split: management stated core distribution earnings exceeded 20% growth, but did not print the exact dollar split between fee and cash profits.
- Asset Management overhead baseline: the release did not separate Seligman performance pay from general and administrative expenses, preventing an exact check on the flat full-year cost plan.
💲 Other KPIs
Rose 7.1 percentage points from a year ago and 1.9 points from June, even though Ameriprise paid off a $500 million debt maturity in the quarter. The ratio climbed because share buybacks and $2.64 billion of unrealized bond losses in accumulated other comprehensive income shrank GAAP shareholders' equity to $5.11 billion.
Reached a record 56.2% over the trailing 12 months, up 3.4 percentage points from 52.8% a year ago and up from 55.0% in the second quarter. Return on equity measures how much annual profit the firm generates per dollar of shareholder book value, and continuous share buybacks keep shrinking the equity base.
Fell $1.8 billion from $28.8 billion in June, and edged down 1% from $27.1 billion a year ago. Cash sweep balances are uninvested client cash that Ameriprise places into bank accounts to earn an interest spread; the company said the Comercia partnership exit caused $1.5 billion of the quarterly drop while underlying balances stayed stable.
🔮 Guidance
Unchanged. The full-year tax rate plan stays at 20% to 22%, with a 21% middle of the range. After a 21.0% operating tax rate in the third quarter, by our math the middle of the full-year plan leaves a 19.9% rate for the fourth quarter.
Unchanged. The fund division still plans to keep full-year general and administrative overhead flat compared with 2025, excluding performance fee compensation for its Seligman team. Reported segment overhead rose 2% from a year ago in the third quarter to $394 million, down from 9% growth in the second quarter.
❓ Key Questions
What was advisor attrition and total headcount in Q3?
Ameriprise added 79 experienced advisors and onboarded 258 from Huntington Bank in October, but has not published total advisor headcount since early 2025. Knowing how many advisors left is necessary to judge whether recruiting discipline is costing the firm market share.
How much of Huntington's $32 billion arrives in Q4?
Management expanded the expected Huntington Bank asset transfer from $28 billion to $32 billion through mid-2027. Investors need the quarterly transfer schedule to separate Huntington inflows from organic advisor gathering in the fourth quarter and early 2027.
What were Asset Management G&A costs excluding Seligman pay?
Reported Asset Management overhead rose 2% in the third quarter and 7% in the first half, which management attributed to Seligman performance bonuses. Without the exact bonus dollar figure, outside readers cannot verify whether underlying overhead is actually flat.
Did the State Street back-office transition finish in Q3?
Last quarter, management said its global back-office conversion with State Street would finish at the end of the third quarter and bring further cost savings. The earnings release did not mention the project, leaving open whether the savings are already in the margin.