The Personal Finance Society (PFS) and NextWealth have combined forces to publish a benchmark report to allow financial planners to compare their firm with those of their peers.

The results in this report are based on a survey of 278 PFS members conducted between 14 July and 13 August 2021.

Employees of financial advice businesses answered questions about the size of their business, their investment proposition, their fees and charges, their technology infrastructure, growth, recruitment and clients.

Key Findings

• 57% of financial advice businesses plan to recruit in the next 12 months 32% in 2020
• 65% of planners are working with more clients than the previous year (up from 45% in 2020)
• Average client portfolio size £345,693 (up from £305,175 in 2020)
• 70% of planners are making use of a client portal (up from 60% in 2020)
• 10% of advisers offer or refer clients to a digital advice offering (up from 5% in 2019)
• 65% of firms do use eSignatures (up from 53% in 2020)