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Ameriprise is a financial planning company that helps people save and invest for retirement, and it sells them advice, insurance, and money management along the way.
Ameriprise Financial is a financial advice company that grew out of the old American Express spinoff. It's not a bank in the ordinary sense, and it doesn't take big risky bets with its own money. Instead, it hires thousands of financial advisors — roughly ten thousand of them — who sit down with people and help them plan for retirement, university bills, and the rest of their financial lives.
The heart of the business is the advisor relationship. When you open an account with an Ameriprise advisor, that advisor manages your money, sells you investments, and gets paid in several ways: a fee based on your assets, commissions on products sold, and sometimes a flat planning fee. Those fees flow to Ameriprise, which is one of the largest advice firms in the United States. It also owns a big money manager called Columbia Threadneedle that runs stock and bond funds for both its own clients and outside investors, and it has a large insurance arm writing life and property insurance. What makes the machine work is that Ameriprise keeps a lot of the money it earns. The advice and asset management fees are steady and predictable, tied to the value of client assets rather than the mood of the markets on any given day. When markets rise, the fee base grows too — a rising tide lifts the boat. The firm has been one of the more consistent performers in the industry and has spent heavily buying back its own shares over the years, which makes each remaining share worth more.
The business is also a clear bet on a demographic: lots of people are getting older and need retirement advice. But it's not all smooth. Recruiting and keeping advisors is expensive and competitive, investors can move their money to cheaper index funds or robo-advisors, and the firm depends on the markets staying reasonably healthy. Still, Ameriprise has made itself one of the biggest advice and money management firms around by owning the customer relationship — and that relationship is what it sells.
Saved answer · last researched 20 Oct 2026