Large advice firms are failing to incentivise advisers to win new clients, says consultancy group NextWealth.
The findings are part of NextWealth’s Adviser Remuneration Benchmarking Report 2026, which surveyed 18 financial advice firms, representing 1,077 advisers.
NextWealth said while large firms are increasingly focused on organic growth, pay still rewards the book an adviser holds rather than the clients they win, highlighting a disconnect between firms’ growth ambitions and the incentives they offer advisers to build new business.
The report showed that revenue is the main bonus metric at seven of the 13 firms that provided details of their bonus criteria. Only a handful pay more for clients an adviser wins than for those the firm hands over.
The findings show that while there is little difference in entry level pay across firms of all sizes and growth strategy, the opportunities to grow salary once at a firm vary greatly. Headroom in salary progression is greatest at scaled consolidators, where advisers can grow their salaries an average four times entry level pay, compared with roughly double elsewhere. However, these are also the most likely to link bonuses to revenue.
Emma Napier, consulting director at NextWealth, said: “If you’re a large firm you need to give advisers a reason to build their careers with you, and that takes a strong culture and the right incentives. However, it’s clear from our research that not everyone is structured to do that and reward growth.
“Only a handful of firms actually differentiate pay depending on whether the adviser has ‘inherited’ a client or brought in new business themselves, which does leave you wondering where the incentive is to win new business at the rest of the firms.”
The report analysed how larger and consolidating advice firms pay their advisers, benchmarking everything from salary bands and progression, bonuses and incentives, contracts and equity, and the support and benefits around them. It combined the firms’ own pay data with NextWealth’s proprietary research to evidence how firms pay their advisers and whether pay is being used as a lever for growth.
Just over half of firms in the research set salary in bands by seniority, from trainee through qualified adviser roles and into senior leadership positions. Where firms do implement tiering, career paths tend to look similar and are typically made up of four bands.
The firms which took part in the study and currently did not differentiate pay said they are working on a solution to the issue, particularly where advisers are given clients through acquisition.
Napier added: “The number of clients receiving ongoing advice is rising, but the number of people advising on retail investments isn’t keeping pace. With our research in the summer showing that seven in 10 advice professionals expected adviser headcount at their firm to rise over the next year, it looks like most firms will be hiring from the same pool.
“Organic growth is now the ambition for large advice firms yet pay is still built around the book. With most firms hiring from the same pool of advisers, how they reward growth will matter as much as how much they pay.”
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