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How much time could the Advisely Index help you save?

The top Advisely Index members save over 280 hours a year through efficiency in advice delivery alone – that’s almost one day a week.
The Advisely Index is a 5-minute benchmarking tool to help you quickly understand your efficiency gaps across advice production, execution, servicing and client engagement – and the simple action steps you can take to move the dial on efficiency and free up valuable time in your business.
Get started below.

Profile

Choose your role

What is the name of your Licensee?

How many of your clients receive self-directed end to end automated or digital advice - i.e., self service advice generated without human involvement?

What percentage of your clients are wholesale (as opposed to retail)?

What financial planning software do you primarily use?

Advice Efficiency

Advice Production

How often are software applications used in advice document generation for initial advice (SOA)?

For the documents prepared in-house (i.e. not using the services of external paraplanning resources), on average, how many hours does it take you to produce a strategy paper for your average new client?

For the documents prepared in-house (i.e. not using the services of external paraplanning resources), on average, how many hours does it take you to produce a basic new client statement of advice (normally single issue, single strategy, individual or household entity, no business owners, no family trusts, no estate planning, not requiring significant modelling.)

For the documents prepared in-house (i.e. not using the services of external paraplanning resources), on average, how many hours does it take you to produce a complex new client statement of advice (normally multiple issues, multiple strategies, multiple entities, including business owners, family trusts, estate planning, tax implications and significant data gathering and modelling.)

For the documents prepared in-house, how many different software applications are used?

How many different applications are used to manually enter client data into?

Advice Execution

On average, how many hours per Advice Document (SOA) does it take to implement the advice recommendations for a basic new client (normally single issue, single strategy, individual or household entity not requiring significant modelling.)

On average, how many hours per Advice Document (SOA) does it take to implement a complex new client (normally multiple issues, multiple strategies, multiple entities including businesses, family trusts and significant data gathering and modelling.)

How often are software applications used for digital signing by clients?

Advice Servicing

For the documents prepared in-house (i.e. not using the services of external paraplanning resources), on average, how many hours does it take to produce review documents for an average existing client?

How often are software applications used in the advice document generation for ongoing advice (ROA)?

Is there a process to manage ongoing client reviews?

Client Engagement

Is there an onboarding process for new clients?

How often are "A" category clients (or very best clients) contacted during the year?

How often are software applications used to communicate with clients?

Practice Efficiency

Revenue

What was the gross revenue of the financial advice business (before any licensee/dealer fees) for the last calendar or fiscal year?

Approximates are fine but please enter whole dollars only with no commas or decimal points.

How much revenue did you generate (before any licensee/dealer fees) for the last calendar or fiscal year?

Expenses

What were the total expenses of the financial advice business for the last calendar or fiscal year? Include the licensee fee/split along with all costs associated with principals and owners, excluding any profit drawings.

Approximates are fine but please enter whole dollars only with no commas or decimal points.

Of your total expenses of the financial advice business how much was spent on salaries and benefits for the principals (working owners)

Of your total expenses of the financial advice business how much was spent on salaries to non-owner staff members (please include outsourcing costs e.g. paraplanning/admin)

Of your total expenses of the financial advice business how much was spent on technology costs? (Please include financial planning and other software licences for all users. This should include applications such as Microsoft and Zoom, any plugins for data collection and managing appointments etc., revenue management, anti- virus and/or anti-malware software, hardware upgrades, maintain servers, internet access, data storage)

Clients

How many ongoing clients does the financial advice business currently service?

How many clients do you currently service?

How many new clients did the financial advice business onboard in the last 12 months?

How many new clients did you onboard in the last 12 months?

On average, how many client meetings (in-person or virtual) would each adviser in the financial advice business conduct each week?

On average, how many client meetings (in-person or virtual) would you conduct each week?

Staff

Number of FTE (full time equivalent) employees (including working owners/principals) in the financial advice business

Number of FTE (full time equivalent) working owners/principals in the financial advice business

Number of FTE (full-time equivalent) support staff in the financial advice business (Please include outsourcing e.g. paraplanning/admin FTE)

How many full-time equivalent (FTE) support staff support you in the business? (Please include outsourcing costs e.g. paraplanning/admin)

Number of FTE (full time equivalent) advisers (including working owners/principals) in the financial advice business