Clients increasingly expect their financial advisors to help with areas of their financial lives beyond their investment portfolios. Cash is one of the most important parts of their financial picture, yet it all too often remains outside the advisory relationship.

For many clients, their bank account is where paychecks arrive, bills are paid, emergency funds accumulate, and major financial decisions begin. The lack of visibility into a meaningful portion of a client’s assets leaves advisors with fewer opportunities to help clients decide what that money should be doing.

The opportunity for advisors is not simply to offer a cash solution. It is to bring cash more intentionally into the advisory relationship.


Clients may be holding more cash than you think

Ask an advisor how much cash a typical client holds, and their first thought may be the 1-2% that typically sits in a custodial cash position. Ask clients directly, and the picture can look very different.

Research has found that high-net-worth households can hold 20% or more of their wealth in cash.1 Flourish Cash† is an invitation-only cash account built for clients of independent financial advisors and sees a similar trend firsthand: among Flourish Cash households reporting a net worth between $1-2M, the average household holds approximately $195,000 in Flourish Cash alone.||

Much of this cash has historically lived at banks, beyond the systems advisors use to manage portfolios and financial plans. This dynamic creates a simple question for advisory firms: Do you know how much cash your clients actually hold, where they hold it, and what they are doing with it?

If the answer is no, there may be an opportunity to provide considerably more value.
 

Using cash to create better client conversations

Bringing held-away cash into view can help advisors engage clients around decisions that may otherwise happen outside the advisory relationship.

Consider a client with $200,000 in cash when their financial plan calls for an $80,000 emergency reserve. Without visibility into the amount, the excess may remain untouched for years. If the advisor can see it, however, the conversation changes.

Perhaps the full balance is appropriate because the client is preparing for a home purchase, tax payment, or another near-term need. Or perhaps some of it could be put to work elsewhere in the financial plan. Other cash activity can add even more context to those conversations. With Flourish Cash, advisors can see how clients use account buckets to earmark specific amounts for specific financial goals. Direct deposit and bill payment can provide additional insight into money flowing into and out of the account, helping advisors better understand clients’ income, spending, and overall cash flow.

The point is not that every dollar of cash should be invested. It is that advisors can make better recommendations when cash is brought into focus and they have a more complete picture of the client’s financial life. 

At Flourish, we have seen that visibility translate into action. More than $1B net has flowed from Flourish Cash accounts to custodians as advisors and clients identify cash that may be better suited for longer-term investing.||


Cash can also be a growth conversation

Cash has another useful characteristic: virtually every client and prospect understands it. 

For a prospect who is hesitant to move an investment portfolio, discussing the cash earning little at their bank can be an easier way to begin a relationship.

The same can be true for next-generation clients, business owners, and non-profit organizations, groups that may maintain meaningful cash balances even when they are not yet ready for a broader wealth-management conversation. Providing a useful solution to an immediate problem gives an advisor a reason to start the conversation today while demonstrating the broader value their firm can provide.

For Amanda Wray, Founder, CCO, and Senior Financial Advisor at Next Up Wealth Advisors, a $130M AUM Arizona-based firm, a conversation about cash became the starting point for a much larger relationship: “I was playing pickleball with a friend who was frustrated with his advisors because, as he put it, ‘they never bring me anything new.’ We grabbed coffee afterward and I showed him Flourish Cash. It was an easy conversation because I wasn’t making a sales pitch—I was solving a real problem and adding value. He ultimately moved his entire $20M relationship to our firm."±

At Flourish, we believe private-bank-like capabilities can be powerful for independent advisors. Historically, banks and wirehouses have had a natural advantage: banking, lending, and investment management all sit within the same institution. Independent advisors should not have to become banks to compete with that experience. Instead, technology can allow them to remain at the center of those financial moments while providing clients with purpose-built solutions through their advisory firm.


Turning insight into action within Orion

Of course, visibility is only useful if advisors can easily act on it. And that is where the expanded integration between Orion and Flourish comes in.

Flourish Cash account data flows into Orion, allowing advisors to incorporate clients’ cash alongside the rest of their financial picture. Today, approximately $3 billion in Flourish Cash is reported through Orion.|| The expanded integration, released in May, takes that connection a step further.

Advisors can identify potential held-away cash opportunities and initiate a Flourish Cash invitation directly from Orion. Information already available within Orion can be used to prefill applications, helping reduce duplicate data entry and the need to move between systems. Once the client opens and funds the account, Flourish Cash data flows back into Orion through the existing integration. The result is a more connected workflow: identify an opportunity, take action, and maintain visibility, all while working within the technology advisors already use.


Making cash part of the advisory experience

Flourish Cash is an invitation-only cash account designed specifically for clients of independent financial advisors. Clients can earn a competitive rate,§ access expanded FDIC insurance coverage through a network of Program Banks,Ω and manage their personal and business cash flow with features including same-day transfers, direct deposit, bill payment, account buckets.

For advisors, however, the bigger opportunity is what those capabilities make possible.

Cash no longer has to be something that simply sits at the bank, disconnected from the financial plan. It can become another part of the ongoing advisory conversation, helping firms deliver additional client value, uncover growth opportunities, and strengthen their position at the center of clients’ financial lives.

And when those insights and actions are connected directly to the systems advisors already use, incorporating cash into the advisory relationship becomes even easier.


Interested in learning more? Orion clients can connect with Orion Account Executive, Spencer Smalley, at spencer.smalley@orion.com to learn more about enabling the Flourish integration and incorporating Flourish Cash into their practice.

About the Author

Ben is President and Chief Commercial Officer of Flourish, where he oversees all client-facing teams, including Sales, Relationship Management, Marketing, Partnerships, and Support. He is a frequent commentator on issues related to investment advisors and has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Marketwatch, and numerous industry publications.

Prior to Flourish, Ben was a founding member of the Betterment for Business team and led the 401(k) sales team. Prior to Betterment, he discovered his love for start-ups at NewsCred, a marketing technology company where he ran the Financial Services sales vertical and built the sales operations organization as the company grew from 15 to 200+ employees. He also holds a degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and holds his Series 7, 24, 63, and 99 licenses.
 

Disclosures

Orion and Flourish are separate and unaffiliated firms.

Flourish is an online platform through which investors can access financial services and products. Flourish’s offerings are provided by different entities and are subject to different terms, investor protections, and risks. Flourish Cash is offered by Flourish Financial LLC, a registered broker-dealer and FINRA member. Flourish Financial LLC is not a bank. Check the background of Flourish Financial LLC and its personnel on FINRA's BrokerCheck. Flourish Lending is offered by SoraFinance, Inc. (d/b/a Flourish Lending), a licensed mortgage broker (NMLS #2355841). SoraFinance, Inc. is not a lender. To verify SoraFinance, Inc., visit NMLS Consumer Access. The Flourish entities mentioned above are all wholly-owned subsidiaries of Flourish Holding Company LLC. Please review the Legal section of our website for more information and account terms. The role of the investment advisor or other firm that invited you to Flourish may vary between different Flourish services and products, as further described in your terms of service. © 2026 Flourish. All rights reserved.

1Capgemini Research Institute, World Wealth Report 2025.

†A Flourish Cash account is a brokerage account offered by Flourish Financial LLC, a registered broker-dealer and FINRA member. Flourish Financial LLC is not a bank. Check the background of Flourish Financial LLC and its personnel on FINRA's BrokerCheck. The cash balance in a Flourish Cash account will be swept from the brokerage account to deposit account(s) at one or more third-party Program Banks that have agreed to accept deposits from customers of Flourish Financial LLC. The accounts at Program Banks will pay a variable rate of interest.

|| Source: Flourish Financial LLC; data as of 01/01/2026, average balances calculated with respect to each household's non-zero Flourish account balances across all household accounts with a self-reported net worth of $1-2M.

|| Source: Flourish Financial LLC; data as of 07/15/2026.

±This feedback may not be representative of the experience of other customers, and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

|| Source: Flourish Financial LLC; data as of 08/13/2026.

§Flourish Cash has a tiered interest rate structure and currently has one tier in effect. Rate and FDIC insurance coverage details can be found in the program summary. We deposit your cash with one or more of the Program Banks, subject to any Program Bank(s) you have excluded. You will earn the highest rate offered by Flourish up to the maximum deposit amount for each tier. Each annual percentage yield (APY) may change at any time. Your advisor may charge fees which impact the effective rate you receive on your cash; you should speak with your advisor for more information. The Flourish Cash interest rate(s) could be lower than the rate that could be earned by opening a deposit account directly with a Program Bank.

Ω The cash balance in a Flourish Cash account that is swept to one or more Program Banks is eligible for FDIC insurance, subject to FDIC rules, including aggregate insurance coverage limits. FDIC insurance will not be provided until funds arrive at the Program Bank. The current list of Program Banks can be found here. Customers are generally eligible for FDIC insurance coverage of $250,000 per customer, per Program Bank, for each account ownership category. FDIC insurance coverage details can be found in the program summary. If the number of Program Banks decreases for a customer (for instance, because a customer chooses to exclude Program Banks from receiving their deposits), the amount of FDIC insurance through Flourish Cash could be lower. Customers are responsible for monitoring whether they maintain deposits at a Program Bank outside of Flourish Cash and should consider choosing to exclude that Program Bank from receiving their deposits to avoid exceeding FDIC insurance limits. Although Flourish Cash is offered through a brokerage account and cash held in brokerage accounts often has the benefit of SIPC protection, until such time as we offer securities products, customers likely will not have the benefit of SIPC protection. SIPC protection is not available for cash held at the Program Banks. For additional information regarding FDIC coverage, visit https://fdic.gov/.

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