Executive Summary
Most advisors actively seek to become more productive – that is, to generate more revenue for every person on their team, even when that 'team' is just a solo advisor in business for themselves. For many, improving productivity is often equated with working longer hours, adopting better technology, or earning another advanced designation. However, according to the latest Kitces Research report on Advisor Productivity, none of these rank among the four key drivers of advisor productivity identified in the research. In this article, Kitces Director of Advisor Research Mark Tenenbaum outlines these four drivers – implementing the right team structure, client affluence, optimizing face time with clients, and pricing confidence – and explains the significance of each for success.
Notably, these four drivers are not equally important. The single most critical driver of advisor productivity is implementing the right team structure. This starts with simply having a team at all – evident in the fact that the median unsupported solo advisor generates 64% less revenue than solo advisors with support. The most successful configuration is the three-person 'Triangle Team', consisting of a Senior Advisor supported by an Associate Advisor and a Client Service Associate (CSA). Triangle Teams generate the highest revenue per advisor and per employee, providing Senior Advisors with the leverage to grow while avoiding the inefficiencies common in larger teams.
Implementing the right team structure – having a team and ensuring the right mix of roles – is the most important driver because it is the foundation that enables success across the other three key drivers. This can be seen with the second driver – client affluence – when considering how higher-net-worth clients typically have more complex financial needs – such as estate planning and charitable giving structures – and the willingness and financial resources to hire advisors capable of managing that complexity. However, as client affluence increases, advisors struggle to scale their services alone; multi-member teams become essential for delivering the depth of service these clients expect.
A similar dynamic is also present for the third driver – optimizing client face time. Top-performing advisors spend about 24% of their time in client meetings, compared to just 17% for their typical peers. The importance of client meetings in driving productivity is unsurprising, as this is where prospects become clients, existing clients reveal new needs (such as navigating a divorce or managing an inheritance), ongoing interaction reinforces the client's sense of being valued, and referrals often arise through conversations like, "I have a friend who's anxious about retirement—can I tell her to reach out to you?" Support staff free advisors to spend more time with clients and focus on client engagement without compromising quality or risking burnout.
The fourth driver is pricing confidence – the ability to set and enforce appropriate fees and minimums. Firms that implement AUM minimums or confidently charge fees aligned with their value consistently outperform those that don't. While this may seem separate from team support, it ultimately ties back to it: Pricing confidence depends on delivering a premium service promise. This involves not only offering comprehensive financial planning but doing so with consistency, thoroughness, and responsiveness – all of which depend on a well-coordinated team.
Ultimately, the key point is that while technology, credentials, and individual effort will always contribute to a successful advisory practice, the most important factor is deliberately structuring teams so advisors can focus their energy where it matters most – serving clients, deepening relationships, and driving the firm forward. Put simply, the most productive firms are those that build the right teams so their advisors can truly focus on being advisors!
Productivity In The Context Of Advisory Firms
At its core, "productivity" measures how much output is generated from a given level of input. In a service-based economy, those inputs and outputs are relatively consistent: the revenue firms produce (the output) relative to the number of individuals responsible for generating that revenue, all constrained by the same finite hours in a day and days in a year (the input). This idea – revenue generated per individual – is known as "revenue productivity". Increases in revenue productivity, therefore, mean generating more revenue for every person working at a firm.
In the context of professionalized financial advice, productivity is typically measured by the annual revenue service teams produce, either per advisor on the team ("revenue per advisor") or per individual ("revenue per employee").
Nerd Note:
Kitces Research defines a service team as the group of individuals working within an advisory firm who are collectively servicing and delivering planning advice to a shared client base. Shared resources – such as centralized financial planning specialists, an investment or trading team, operations staff, or outsourced support external to the practice – are not considered part of the service team.
Most service teams want to be more productive – that is, to increase their revenue productivity. Indeed, according to the latest Kitces Research data on advisor productivity, only 16% of service teams are not actively seeking further growth. This group includes lifestyle advisors who build their practices to support their preferred way of living – for example, working part-time to spend more time with family – and who deliberately avoid growth, such as taking on more clients or moving upmarket, to prevent longer hours or added management responsibilities. Which means the other 84% of teams are employing at least some strategies to become more productive!
The Latest Kitces Research Data On Advisor Productivity
Advisors looking to boost productivity often encounter familiar themes in industry publications or from vendors. One common suggestion involves leveraging technology to reduce back-office costs and minimize time spent on administrative tasks, thereby freeing up more time for client engagement and business development. Another is pursuing post-CFP designations – such as Chartered Financial Consultant, Certified Investment Management Analyst, or Enrolled Agent – to stand out in an increasingly planning-centric marketplace. As of 2024, roughly 33% of advisors hold CFP marks, up sharply from 10% in the late 1990s.
Earlier this year, Kitces Research released the fourth edition of our semi-annual Advisor Productivity study (using original survey data gathered in 2024) In this report, the Kitces Research team ran a series of statistical models to identify the factors that most strongly correlate with revenue productivity. Among the most notable findings from our research is what does not drive productivity. Namely, the data show little relationship between firms' investments in technology and revenue productivity. Similarly, obtaining post-CFP designations appears to have minimal impact on productivity beyond what is achieved by advisors who hold 'only' the CFP marks.
Instead, our latest Kitces Research data identifies four factors that stand out above the rest in driving advisor productivity:
- Implementing the right team structure;
- Client affluence;
- Optimizing facetime with clients; and
- Pricing confidence.
These four drivers are not equal in importance. The single most important driver of advisor productivity is implementing the right team structure – that is, having the optimal mix of roles on the team. Building the right team sets the foundation for advisor success in each of the other three drivers. Put more simply, if a firm struggles to attract higher-value clients, if back-office tasks are crowding out meaningful work, or if fee confidence is lacking, the first place to look is the team. With the right structure in place, advisory firms can more easily transform these challenges into strengths that, in turn, drive further success!
Driver #1: Implementing The Right Team Structure
When examining the relationship between 'teaming' and advisor productivity, what stands out most from the Kitces Research data is that having any kind of team to leverage and support them is preferable to having no team at all – even a single CSA supporting a solo advisor makes a meaningful difference! (Although as noted later, some team structures remain preferable to others.) As shown in the figure below, solo advisors with team support more closely mirror the productivity levels of multi-advisor teams – whether they operate in siloed structures or share profits in ensemble setups – than they do unsupported solos.
The gap between unsupported solo advisors and everyone else is astounding. While the median unsupported solo advisor brings in $182,500 in revenue, this is $317,500 (or 64%) less than the $500,000+ median for supported solo advisors. Even at the 75th percentile, unsupported solos generate a respectable $350,000, which is 61% less than the $900,000 their supported peers are bringing in. Put simply, solo advisors without team support seem to 'cap out' at roughly a third of the productivity they could achieve with the right help in place! Having any team isn't just helpful – it's a prerequisite for running a truly productive practice.
The finding that unsupported solo advisors can match the revenue per advisor of larger multi-advisor firms simply by adding CSA support is significant, given that 23% of advisory firms operate as unsupported solo practices – 78% of which are actively pursuing growth. Which means nearly one in five advisory firms are growing solo practices where hiring a first CSA could be a key step toward achieving their growth objectives.
Three-Person 'Triangle Teams' Maximize Advisor Productivity
While any team support boosts productivity, the next question is how many seats a team should have – and which specific roles should fill them. A simple way to think about team composition is to divide roles into two groups:
- Lead advisors (e.g., Senior Advisors, Service Advisors), who manage client relationships; and
- Support staff (e.g., Associate Advisors, Paraplanners, CSAs) who support lead advisors.
With these groups in mind, teams can be described as the number of lead advisors plus the number of support staff. For example, a 1+1 team has one lead advisor and one support staff member (typically a Senior Advisor and a CSA). A 1+0 team is an unsupported solo advisor.
In the Kitces Research study, the most productive team across both revenue-per-advisor and revenue-per-employee metrics was the 1+2 team: one lead advisor and two support staff (typically a Senior Advisor, Associate Advisor, and CSA). These teams generate an impressive $1,237,000 per advisor and $412,333 per team member. In practice, this suggests that once a solo advisor hires a CSA (often at around 30–40 client households), the next step should be adding an Associate Advisor, which commonly occurs as the firm approaches 100 client households.
As we've explored elsewhere, the success of these three-person 1+2 teams – what we call 'Triangle Teams' – comes from their ability to balance the 'leverage-coordination trade-off'. Small teams (one or two people) minimize coordination challenges but often lack the staff leverage needed to free Senior Advisors to focus on growth. Larger teams offer more leverage but face certain coordination challenges due to their size, such as lead advisors redundantly allocating their time (e.g., attending the same meetings) and increased team management responsibilities (e.g., onboarding, training, performance reviews, ad hoc communications when completing tasks involving multiple members).
Triangle Teams hit the sweet spot: they provide enough staff leverage from two support roles to let Senior Advisors focus on business growth while minimizing the coordination challenges that commonly plague larger teams.
Taken together, having a team – especially with the right mix of roles – is a critical factor in boosting revenue productivity. As the data show, team structure doesn't just drive productivity on its own; it also opens additional growth pathways, such as moving upmarket, optimizing client facetime, and maintaining confidence in fees.
Driver #2: Client Affluence
The second key driver of advisor productivity is client affluence, which is hardly surprising given that more than 90% of advisors earn at least some revenue from AUM fees – and for 86%, it's their primary revenue source. Due to typical graduated fee schedules used by 58% of teams – with multiple tiers and blended rates applied incrementally to portions of a client's portfolio – more affluent clients generate greater revenue per relationship, even as effective rates decline at higher breakpoints. The difference is dramatic: advisors serving clients with less than $250,000 in AUM typically generate $1,907 in annual revenue per client, compared with $20,000 for those primarily serving clients with $10 million or more!
Part of the reason high-net-worth clients are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year in advisory fees is that their financial lives are significantly more complex. From intricate estate plans and multi-generational wealth transfer strategies to tax optimization across diverse income streams, business succession planning, charitable giving structures, and managing concentrated stock positions, these clients have both the both the willingness and the resources to hire advisors who can help them manage this complexity.
The result is that firms serving more affluent clients are substantially more productive than their peers. Teams primarily serving clients with less than $250,000 in assets generate about $180,000 in annual revenue per advisor, while those serving clients with $5 million or more generate $1,212,500.
Most firms naturally move upmarket over time as client portfolios grow with market gains and advisors gain experience and credibility to attract more affluent prospects. In this way, time works to the advisor's advantage – on average, the longer they stay in business, the more affluent their client base becomes, and the more productive their practice. This makes it critical to position the firm to meet the needs of affluent clients, because while market growth may bring them in, retention depends on how well the firm manages the increased complexity. Ultimately, as will be discussed later, the key to attracting and retaining high-value clients lies in building a team capable of sustaining the elevated service demands that accompany higher levels of affluence.
Meeting The Service Obligations of High-Value Clients Requires Team Support
While advisors and their teams can generate higher levels of revenue per client by moving upmarket, doing so requires them to actually meet their clients' financially complex planning needs. And this requires significant time from the entire team both upfront and on an ongoing basis. For example, service teams working with clients generating less than $2,500 annually spend about 14.5 total team hours on creating and implementing new plans, 19 hours during the first year of the relationship, and 17 hours annually in subsequent years. By contrast, teams serving clients who generate $40,000 or more per year invest approximately 39.5 hours upfront – 38 of which occur in the first year, suggesting many plans aren't fully implemented until later – and a notable 62 hours per year thereafter.
This increased time commitment also extends to client interactions. Teams serving lower-revenue clients average 15 client touchpoints per year, compared to 23 for those working with higher-net-worth clients. The key point is that moving upmarket requires a far greater investment of time and attention per client relationship – not just during initial planning, but throughout the life of the engagement.
Larger teams can help advisors sustain this workload. Our data reveal this pattern in the existing marketplace: the median team size grows from two members for firms primarily serving clients with less than $250,000 in investable assets to four members for firms serving clients with $10 million or more.
Driver #3: Optimizing Face Time With (Existing) Clients
The third key driver of advisor productivity is optimizing face time with clients. The importance of client face time is shown in the figure below: teams generating more than $1M in annual revenue per advisor spend 24% of their week in client meetings, compared with 17% for firms generating less.
The value of client meetings is straightforward. They are where prospects become clients, where existing clients share new needs the advisor can assist with (e.g., dealing with a divorce, managing inherited accounts), where ongoing contact reinforces the client's sense of being valued and remembered – an important key to retention – and where referrals often emerge in conversations like, "I have a friend who's anxious about retirement – can I tell her to reach out to you?"
Importantly, this driver focuses on optimizing rather than maximizing meeting time. As illustrated in the graphic below, revenue per advisor climbs steadily as meeting time increases – from $300,000 for those spending less than 10% of the week with clients, to $650,000 for those spending 25%–39%. Productivity peaks when advisors spend about 40% of their time in meetings, generating $775,000 in revenue per advisor. Beyond that point – roughly 16 hours per week, such as four hours per day Monday through Thursday with Friday reserved for planning – the curve plateaus, and revenue even dips slightly for those spending more than half their weeks in meetings. This is because clients only need so many meetings, and beyond a certain point, additional face time loses its value. Moreover, advisors can only manage so many client relationships before personal attention begins to decline.
Still, the typical Senior Advisor spends just 17% of their time in client meetings. Which means the vast majority of firms looking to increase their productivity would benefit from (considerably!) increasing their Senior Advisors' face time with clients.
The Importance Of Support Staff For Increasing Client Face Time
For an advisor focused on acquiring new clients and becoming more productive, managing the growing workload will eventually require adding seats to the team – showing once again the importance of team support in enabling the other key drivers of productivity. As the figure below shows, unsupported solo advisors spend the least amount of time in client meetings. Bringing on just one additional team member – whether another lead advisor (expanding from a 1+0 team to a 2+0 team) or a Client Service Associate (expanding from a 1+0 to a 1+1 team) – boosts client-facing time by 50%, from 10% to 15%. Expanding to a three-person Triangle Team increases further to 20%.
Notably, growing beyond a Triangle Team – for example, by adding a third support role such as a paraplanner – also corresponds with increased client-facing time, even though it tends to coincide with declines in revenue per advisor and per team member. This reflects the leverage-coordination trade-off discussed in Driver #1: added support provides more leverage for the Senior Advisor to spend more time with clients, but it also introduces another layer of management and coordination, which can reduce overall productivity.
In practice, most advisors would benefit from increasing client face time from the Senior Advisor median of 17% to 35%–40% of their week, with team support being a key to making that possible. However, meeting time beyond 40% is unlikely to yield additional productivity gains, and as service teams grow larger, the benefits of increased client face time are eventually outweighed by the inefficiencies of bigger teams.
Driver #4: Pricing Confidence
The fourth and final driver of advisor productivity is pricing confidence, which has two closely related components. The first is aligning fees with the value of services provided – in other words, above-average service should command above-average fees. This includes setting appropriate fee levels (e.g., a 1% AUM fee or a $3,500 annual subscription fee) and establishing minimums (e.g., AUM minimums) to ensure the firm takes on only profitable clients, based on the staff hours required for both initial and ongoing planning work. For the typical service team, that amounts to 22 collective hours in the first year and 21 hours annually thereafter.
The second, equally important component is enforcing those fees and minimums so clients are paying what they should and remain profitable for the firm. The significance of this point is illustrated in the graphic below, which shows that teams with any AUM minimum are more productive than those with none, while teams that consistently waive their minimums are less productive than those that enforce them most of the time. Notably, there is little difference in revenue per advisor between teams that occasionally waive AUM minimums – for example, for the child of a larger client or for friends and family – and those that never waive them. This suggests that while it is critical to enforce minimums as a rule, there is room for flexibility to accept less profitable clients (e.g., to build relationships with future heirs of current clients or to dedicate a portion of time to serving less affluent clients), as long as such cases remain true exceptions that do not strain team capacity.
Team Support Strengthens Fee Confidence
While the role of team support in pricing confidence is less direct than with the other two drivers, fees ultimately must align with the real value delivered to clients. One part of that value proposition is the planning work itself, which now spans an average of 15 components (e.g., tax planning, estate planning, stock options, business consulting, charitable giving). Another is the client experience, with the typical team maintaining 16 client touchpoints per year with each client through meetings, phone calls, and emails. Supporting all of this planning, client engagement, operations, and other functions is a growing number of software tools – the average firm uses 12 applications – requiring ongoing training, integration across tools, and data entry.
A well-structured team makes it possible to sustain this expanded scope of work. With the right support in place – ensuring plans are implemented thoroughly, client interactions remain consistent and meaningful, and technology is effectively managed – advisors can confidently charge what they're really worth. Team support not only sustains the quality of service but also empowers advisors to price in line with the real value they deliver, reinforcing this final driver of advisor productivity.
Advisor productivity is shaped by many forces, but our research highlights four drivers that matter most: implementing the right team structure, moving upmarket with more affluent clients, optimizing advisor face time with clients, and maintaining pricing confidence. At the center of all four lies one common factor: the importance of team support. Without the right team, it's nearly impossible to free advisors from administrative overload, sustain the demands of high-value clients, create the capacity for meaningful client meetings, or deliver the comprehensive planning experience that justifies premium fees.
Technology, credentials, and personal effort will always play a role in building a successful advisory practice. But the firms that thrive are the ones that deliberately structure their teams so advisors can focus their energy where it matters most – serving clients, deepening relationships, and leading the firm forward. Or stated more simply: the most productive firms are those that build the right teams so their advisors can truly just be advisors!
