Achieving organic growth for financial advice firms
Organic growth isn’t the easy route, but it is the most rewarding. It puts you in control of your business’s direction, deepens your client relationships, and creates long-term value that can’t be bought.
In our new report, we've partnered with NextWealth to explore how financial advice firms can support more clients to achieve their financial goals by unlocking organic growth potential.
Only 14% of people with £100,000 or more in investable assets take ongoing advice. 1
Nearly half (46%) of financial advisers are working with more clients than the previous year.
Over three quarters of adviser firms want to grow their assets under advice, but only a tenth have a clearly defined strategy.
As firms grow, business owners can find themselves wearing ’10-12 hats a day’, managing the immediate needs of the business rather than doing what they’re most passionate about: helping clients.
Unless otherwise stated, the research referred to on this page was collected by NextWealth in March 2025, using an online survey of 200 financial advice professionals from across the UK, and in-depth interviews with 11 financial advice firms.
- NextWealth Advice at Scale report, January 2024
Why organic growth?
Growing the number of clients served by the financial market makes sense for economic growth. But with falling numbers of advice firms, the solution must involve finding the best route to long-term value creation as well as business resilience. Strategic organic growth allows you to nurture not only your clients’ future and wellbeing, but also that of your firm.
Six steps to organic growth with purpose
The Organic Growth for Financial Advice Firms report identifies six steps to build your business. These steps encourage you to apply the same logical, goal-driven thinking that underpins great financial planning to create a defined, measureable strategy for organic growth.
Are you ready to grow?
‘We worked out we needed 15% growth just to stand still because of withdrawals and deaths. We had next to no lost clients. But how do you know? It’s being able to say, “we know which clients have left completely by turning off our agency, as opposed to withdrawing their money”.’ – Operations director, firm with 10-20 employees.
What helps?
- Create time to think – growth starts with readiness. Regular strategic sessions, even an hour a month, can shift the mindset from reactive to intentional.
- Document your ‘why’ – clarity of purpose matters. Codify what makes your firm tick so it can be scaled or delegated without losing its soul.
- Outsource expertise to help you focus on growth strategy – consider where external support (advertising, admin, tech) could free you to focus on what matters most in pushing your firm and its client proposition forward.
- Operational capacity is crucial - consider team structure, use tech systems
- Understand your client bank – intentional client strategy drives results
- Delegate growth – empower your team with clear goals and metrics to own parts of the growth journey. In Step 4 you’ll find more on metrics and how to review them so that you have a tight handle on your firm's progress.
You can find these case studies in step 1 of the Organic Growth report:
Where are you now and where do you want to be?
‘...feeling a bit burned by the ever-increasing cost of advice and effect of regulation, and just not being confident that we can put a concrete figure on what growth and development of the business should look like.’ – Executive director, firm with 2-5 employees
What helps?
- Clarity is rare but powerful - can the service you’re offering and want to offer meet client needs, whilst being aligned to your firm's resources and capacity? If not, you could review:
- client value thresholds
- the target client profile
- your service offering (e.g. lighter touch, remote or ad-hoc)
- resources needed to deliver the services you want.
- Align your team on purpose, ambition, and proposition – internal buy-in is key. Prioritise culture.
- Strategy doesn’t mean speed - it’s focused, sustainable expansion based on a plan you can measure and refine over time.
You can find this case study in step 2 of the Organic Growth report:
- Using collaboration to define and drive strategic change
Scaling your plan
‘Referrals work because our clients know what we deliver and know who it’s right for.’ – Operations Director, firm with 10-20 employees.
What helps?
- Standardise your advice process, onboarding, reporting and communication.
- Make sure your service reflects your brand, not just the individual adviser.
- Build processes that support referrals and marketing across channels, for example, how will new leads be followed up and by whom?
- Surface key insights through dashboards and visual aids to engage the team with how the business is progressing.
- Personalisation can still scale: firms can achieve high growth through disciplined referrals and process clarity, while preserving the depth and goodwill of client relationships.
You can find this case study in step 3 of the Organic Growth report:
- How to scale without sacrificing a relationship-led identity
What gets measured gets managed
‘We define a new client in two ways: marketing defines them by engagement (fee agreed or paid), while finance defines them by revenue appearing in our systems. It's a verification check. It takes 4–6 months to onboard a client and up to 12 months for their portfolio to mature. Understanding this is crucial when measuring growth.’ – CEO, firm with 200 employees.
Definitions vary – agree on a metric to track your firm’s growth.
Metrics you could track:
- New client numbers - New net recurring revenue
- AUA growth - Inbound leads per channel
- Number of active clients - Conversion rates
- Time to onboard clients - Net ongoing fees per adviser
- Share of wallet: clients’ total investible assets held with the firm
You can find this case study in step 4 of the Organic Growth report:
- Building capital value through data
Have you identified the tools and training that can future-proof your firm?
‘Before we pushed referrals, we had to be sure the tech was right. Growth would’ve broken the model otherwise.’ – CEO, firm with 10-20 employees.
Top growth enablers identified by firms
- A regulatory framework that supports working with clients with simpler needs
- Better onboarding tech
- Time-saving document generation (e.g. suitability reports)
- Automation of core advice and admin processes
- Easier access to client data and MI
Remember:
- Select and implement the right tools
- Invest in people, not just processes and tech
You can find this case study in step 5 of the Organic Growth report:
- Making partnerships meaningful
Why continual evolution matters for sustainable growth
‘We’ve publicly shared our business plan. It keeps the team aligned and signals confidence in our strategy.’ – Director, firm with 6-10 employees.
What helps?
- Stay true to your defined client segments
- Anticipate and adapt to changing needs
- Reinvest in people, systems, and propositions
- Track performance with discipline
- Plan around adviser capacity
- Consider tiered and targeted services to expand reach
- Remember: client experience must remain personal
You can find these case studies in step 6 of the Organic Growth report:
- Re-engaging clients to unlock hidden value
- Turning events into engagement
