“The winners and Excellence Awardees featured in these pages reflect a wide spectrum of talent, ideas, and leadership.” That line comes from Andy Burt, managing editor of InvestmentNews, in his note opening the publication’s commemorative guide to its second annual InvestmentNews Awards, whose winners were announced June 24, 2025, ahead of a gala at the Edison Ballroom in New York.
Burt is not describing a newsroom that waits for press releases. He is describing a publication that runs a recognition engine, a news desk, an opinion forum and a live events business, all aimed at the same reader. Most advisors and wealth firms who ask how to get featured in InvestmentNews only knock on one of those doors, usually the news desk, usually with an announcement nobody asked for. The firms that show up repeatedly have figured out that the masthead has four entrances, and each one wants something different.
This piece maps all four, shows you which one fits what you actually have to offer, and covers the compliance work that has to happen before anything with your name on it goes live.
Who InvestmentNews actually writes for
InvestmentNews is a trade publication. Its reader is the financial advisor, the RIA owner, the broker-dealer executive, the wealth management operator and the vendors who sell to all of them. It is not written for the client. That fact disqualifies a large share of pitches, because they are consumer stories wearing a trade costume: “Five ways retirees can protect their savings” belongs in a consumer outlet, not in front of readers who already know the five ways.
What the reader does care about is visible in the coverage itself. Look at what the newsroom has been discussing on The InvestmentNews Podcast through 2026, where host Bruce Kelly and colleagues have covered Vanguard’s purchase of Altruist, Robinhood’s acquisition of TradePMR and its custody ambitions for RIAs, Schwab’s changes to its client referral program, and RIA valuations and compensation. Those are business-of-advice stories. They are about custody, consolidation, recruiting, technology, regulation, succession and pay. A retirement planning insight only becomes an InvestmentNews story when it changes how advisors work or how firms compete.
So before you write anything, translate your idea into the reader’s terms. If you are an advisor, the angle is rarely what you told clients. It is what you changed in your practice, what it cost, and what happened. If you are a fintech, the angle is not your feature list; it is the operational problem advisors are paying to solve and the evidence that your approach works. If you are an asset manager, the angle is how advisors are actually allocating to a category, and why, not your fund’s merits.
The editorial team rotates, as every masthead does. Paul Curcio was promoted to editor-in-chief in May 2022, Andy Burt signs editorial notes as managing editor, and reporters such as Bruce Kelly, Andrew Cohen and James Rogers carry bylines across the broker-dealer, RIA and practice management beats. Check current bylines on the site the week you pitch rather than trusting any list, including this one.
The Four Doors framework
Here is the model we use when a wealth client asks how to get featured in InvestmentNews. I call it the Four Doors framework: every placement in the publication enters through one of four distinct entrances, News, Outside-IN, Awards or Stage, and each door has its own gatekeeper, its own calendar and its own definition of value. The mistake is not pitching badly. The mistake is pitching the right asset through the wrong door.
The News door belongs to reporters on beats. It opens for information they cannot get elsewhere: a team move with assets attached, a deal, a regulatory filing someone has not noticed, data from your own platform that reveals a trend, or an expert reaction delivered fast on a breaking story. It does not open for product launches dressed up as trends.
The Outside-IN door is the contributed opinion section, which the publication describes as “a popular forum for top financial professionals and executives.” It opens for a sharp argument from a practitioner, written to tight specifications, with no selling. We cover the mechanics below.
The Awards door is run by the awards team, not the reporters. It opens on a published calendar for nominations, and InvestmentNews runs several programs: the InvestmentNews Awards with 22 categories in the 2025 edition, from Advisor of the Year to Wealthtech Provider and Wholesaler of the Year, plus Women to Watch and 40 Under 40. These are nomination processes with stated methodologies, not pitches.
The Stage door is the events business. InvestmentNews runs gatherings including RIA Activate and the Women Advisor Summit, which the publication announced on Aug. 6, 2026 would return to 583 Park Avenue in New York on Nov. 5. Speaking slots, panels and sponsored sessions sit here, and the people who book them are often not the people who assign stories.
Run the audit honestly. Write down the single strongest asset you have right now, whether that is a proprietary data set, a contrarian opinion, a track record of building a team, or a deal. Then ask which door that asset was built for. A firm with a great recruiting story and no data should not be cold-pitching the tech editor. An advisor with a sharp, defensible opinion about fee compression but no news should be writing for Outside-IN, not emailing reporters asking to be profiled.
How do advisors and fintechs get quoted?
Through the News door, and almost never through a cold profile request. Being quoted in a trade publication is a function of being useful to a specific reporter on a specific beat before they need you. That means reading their last ten stories, knowing which ones they followed up on, and showing up with something that advances the next one.
For advisors, the most reliable quote opportunities come from industry movement. When a large broker-dealer changes its payout grid, when a custodian alters its referral program, when a consolidator buys a firm in your market, reporters need practitioners who will say on the record what it means for advisors on the ground. The advisor who emails within hours with two clear sentences and a phone number gets the call. The advisor who sends a general “available for comment on industry trends” note gets nothing, because that note contains no information.
For fintechs, the currency is data. Reporters on the technology and practice management beats are hungry for numbers drawn from real advisor behavior: adoption rates, time saved, migration patterns, pricing shifts. If your platform touches thousands of advisor accounts, you are sitting on story material. Package an anonymized, aggregated finding with a clear methodology and offer it exclusively to one reporter. Exclusivity matters on a trade beat because the competitive set is small and reporters notice when the same chart lands in three outlets the same morning.
For asset managers, the reporter is usually after the advisor angle on flows, product structure or fees. A portfolio manager who can explain why advisors are moving into a category, in plain language and without promotional framing, is valuable. One who recites fund talking points will be cut from the story or never called back.
Two practical habits separate the firms that become recurring sources. First, they answer the phone. A reporter on deadline calls three people and quotes the first two who pick up. Second, they keep the comment narrow. We go deeper on this rhythm in our guide to how to pitch trade publications, and the advisor-specific version lives in our playbook on press for financial advisors.
Write for Outside-IN on its terms, not yours
The contributed route is the most controllable answer to how to get featured in InvestmentNews, and the publication spells out its rules on its submissions page. Pieces should run between 500 and 600 words and arrive as an attached Word document. The article cannot have been published anywhere else, currently or previously, and the page specifically includes social media in that ban. You need a short bio with your title and affiliations, a short company description, a high-resolution headshot, and links to source material where relevant. Footnotes and corporate disclosures will not be published. Self-promotional pieces and anything that promotes an investment product or service are out, and you are asked to disclose possible conflicts of interest at submission.
A few of those rules trip people up. The 500 to 600 word range is short; that is roughly four tight arguments, not a white paper. The social media exclusion means the LinkedIn post you wrote last month cannot be expanded and resubmitted. And the publication states that not every email gets a personal reply: if you hear nothing in five to seven business days, you are free to place the piece elsewhere. There is no compensation, staff write the final headline, and accepted pieces become InvestmentNews property unless otherwise agreed.
What wins inside those constraints is a specific argument from experience. The strongest contributed pieces in trade media take a position that a meaningful slice of readers will disagree with, then defend it with something the author has actually seen. “Advisors should stop offering free financial plans” from someone who stopped and can describe what happened to close rates is a column. “Five tips for building client trust” is not.
Write the piece for advisors, not for prospects. Name the trade-off honestly. Cut every sentence that exists to make your firm look good, because the editor will cut it anyway, and its presence signals that you do not understand the section. If you want a template for structure and tone, our walkthrough on writing a bylined op-ed applies cleanly here.
Run every placement past compliance before it runs
This is where wealth firms differ from every other industry we pitch for. A quote, a column or an award does not end at publication. It becomes something your firm will want to use, and the moment you use it, regulators care.
Start with awards, because they are the most tempting to promote. On Aug. 20, 2026, Savant Wealth Management published a note that InvestmentNews had named its advisor Jenny Sneed an Excellence Awardee in the 2026 Women to Watch Awards, with category winners to be named by an independent judging panel at the Nov. 5 gala in New York. Look at how Savant handled it. The post states plainly that Savant “did not pay a fee to be nominated or considered for this award,” links to the published methodology, notes that nominations ran April 20 to June 19, 2026, and carries the firm’s standard disclosure. That is not decoration. Under the SEC Marketing Rule, Rule 206(4)-1 under the Investment Advisers Act, an RIA that references a third-party rating in an advertisement has to disclose the date the rating was given, the period of data it was based on, the identity of the third party that created it, and whether compensation was provided directly or indirectly in connection with obtaining it. Savant’s post is a clean model of the kind of disclosure your compliance team will expect.
Broker-dealer reps face a parallel regime. FINRA Rule 2210 governs member firm communications with the public, and once your firm takes an article, a reprint or an award announcement and distributes it to prospects or clients, it is a firm communication subject to the rule’s content standards and your firm’s review process. Plan for that before you pitch, not after the story publishes and you want to post it.
The interview itself carries its own risk. Speak to principles, process and industry dynamics. Do not discuss specific client outcomes, performance figures or recommendations of particular securities, and do not promise anything about results. Tell your compliance officer before an interview with a reporter, not after, and if your firm requires pre-approval for contributed content, build that review time into your Outside-IN timeline, because the publication’s exclusivity rule means you cannot shop a stale draft elsewhere while compliance sits on it.
Coverage in a trade outlet also compounds outside the outlet. AI answer engines and search results increasingly pull from respected trade sources when someone asks about an advisor or firm, and consistent, accurate mentions help build the entity signals behind features like a Google Knowledge Panel for financial advisors. That is one more reason to get the compliance language right the first time: whatever you publish will be quoted back for years.
So, the short version. InvestmentNews writes for advisors and the firms that serve them, not for their clients. Pick your door before you write a word: News for information and fast expert reaction, Outside-IN for a 500 to 600 word argument that sells nothing, Awards for nominations on the published calendar, Stage for events. Match your single strongest asset to the door it was built for, check current bylines the week you pitch, and put compliance in the room before the reporter is.