This year’s Financial Advice Business Benchmarks (FABB) report is the seventh in the series. We publish it free each year to give back to the financial advice community and share insights that help businesses navigate an ever-changing market.

Advisers tell us they use FABB to track how peers are evolving: pricing, the investment mix, staffing ratios and tech stacks. One outsourced paraplanning firm said they use FABB data in most recommendation reports and to help other advice firms benchmark, calling it “the best free report available”.

Our cover tradition continues with robots capturing the mood of the market: in 2023 sheltering under an umbrella during a time of tepid markets, rising interest rates and the new Consumer Duty, to surveying a brighter, growth-oriented path last year.

Growth remains a central theme. What’s new is the shift from coping with regulation to tuning the advice engine for the road ahead – improving outcomes for clients, businesses and advisers, and getting on the front foot.

Behind the benchmarks, financial advice professionals describe a rolling tune-up of the advice engine: standardising journeys, improving data fidelity, and wiring systems together. A flavour, in their own words:

“More standardisation… using reporting for client outcomes, rather than having it done to us.”

“Use of a new back-office system providing more accurate data.”

“Reviewing all charges and rationalising legacy charging structures into more simplified service levels”

“New data governance policy – centralised more information.”

Scale ≠ growth.

A word on growth ambitions. Not every firm wants to be bigger. Though with the reality of ageing client banks some firms tell us they need around 15% net new revenue just to stand still (one firm’s calculation, but a pattern we have heard echoed). Others aim to serve the same number of clients, better and more efficiently.

For firms seeking to reach more people, the fear is often losing the personal touch. A scalable advice engine protects quality by standardising the essentials (data capture, research steps, suitability evidence, review cadence) while preserving personalisation at the edges (goals, communication style), so advisers spend more time where judgment matters.

This report maps the advice engine across its five components: People & capacity, Clients, Business strategy & growth, Tech & efficiency, and Markets & regulation.

At the end of each section, you’ll find links to deeper dives: reports and guides with practical insight and case studies, and ideas for fine tuning your own advice engine.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the report.

Heather Hopkins, Managing Director at NextWealth