Exclusive vs shared financial adviser leads: the UK maths

A shared lead puts you in a race. If you're the fourth or fifth adviser to ring the same person, they may already have explained their situation to someone else and half-chosen who to use. That's the problem we built InvestmentsBooked around, which is why we sell booked appointments rather than leads. For financial advisers the answer depends on price, speed and pot size, so here are the numbers.

What do "exclusive" and "shared" mean for financial adviser leads?

The words get used loosely. When you're buying, there are six different things a supplier might mean:

• Shared lead. The same enquiry goes to several advisers at once. On Bark, a general request can be answered by up to five professionals, and each pays credits to respond.
• Matched to several. The consumer is shown a shortlist and picks. uprosper shows three to five checked professionals; VouchedFor's directory shows the top rated advisers in an area and its copy encourages people to contact more than one.
• Exclusive once purchased. Only you can buy that enquiry, but the consumer may be talking to other firms through other routes. This is the directory model, and it's how Unbiased describes its enquiries.
• Exclusive lead. One buyer per record. Most dedicated pension lead sellers claim this (Lurvo, GlobalLeads, LeadCrowd, Professional Leads, Digital Roo). Some agree distribution per campaign instead.
• Exclusive booked appointment. One firm, with a time in your diary. You usually pay on booking, so a no-show is your cost.
• Exclusive show. One firm, a booked time, and you pay only if the meeting happens. ADsorbed and InvestmentsBooked work this way.

We compare named suppliers on all of these in the UK IFA lead generation companies comparison.

Are Unbiased leads exclusive or shared?

This one causes a lot of confusion, so it's worth stating precisely. Unbiased's pricing page says: "Once purchased, all enquiries are exclusive to you and only you." That's accurate for the enquiry. Once you've paid for it, Unbiased won't sell the same enquiry to another adviser, and calling Unbiased leads "shared" is out of date.

What exclusivity after purchase doesn't cover:

• The consumer's other enquiries. Someone who filled in Unbiased may also have used VouchedFor, a bank's referral service or a local search. Unbiased's refund policy lists consumers who are still shopping around as not refundable, which tells you it happens.
• Unaccepted direct enquiries. Under its terms, a direct enquiry you don't accept in time can be passed to other local advisers.
• The speed race. Unbiased's own figures show 80% of leads book a meeting when contacted the same day and 25% after 24 hours. Exclusive doesn't mean patient.

So Unbiased enquiries sit in the "exclusive once purchased" row: better than shared, but short of a meeting booked for you alone. Prices and terms are on the Unbiased alternative page, and the full cost comparison is in Unbiased vs VouchedFor.

What number should you compare: price per lead or cost per meeting?

Suppliers publish price per lead because it's the smallest number, but it tells you little on its own. A lead is a name and a phone number; the thing you want is a first meeting with someone who can become a client. So compare:

Cost per attended meeting = (money spent + your chasing time) ÷ first meetings that actually happen

Then, if you track conversion, divide by your meeting-to-client rate to get cost per client. We use 25% as a default, which is the figure Unbiased uses in its own examples. The lead generation pillar guide applies the same formula to all nine acquisition channels.

What do exclusive and shared leads cost in the UK?

Bands from public price lists checked on 27 September 2026. These are ranges across suppliers, not quotes.

Sources: Bark terms and help centre; Lurvo, LeadCrowd, GlobalLeads, Professional Leads and Lead Tech price pages; Unbiased enquiry prices; VouchedFor enquiry pricing effective 1 October 2026; Lead Pronto and RMT Direct appointment pages. What IFA leads cost has the full price ladder.

Why do shared leads convert worse?

The reasons are structural, and most apply however good the prospect is:

• The first callers get the conversation. Bark lets up to five professionals respond to one request, so the prospect can hear from several advisers in a short space of time. By the fourth call, you're asking them to explain the same thing again.
• Unknown numbers stop getting answered. Several unfamiliar numbers in quick succession looks like a scam, which is a reasonable reaction when the subject is pensions.
• Speed decays value fast. Unbiased's own data (80% same day, 25% after 24 hours) is for exclusive enquiries. On a shared lead, the decay starts the moment the first competitor dials.
• Older leads get cheaper. LeadCrowd, for example, puts IFA leads that didn't sell in real time into a marketplace where "the older the lead, the lower the price". Cheap aged leads are usually cheap for a reason.

No UK supplier publishes a contact or meeting rate for shared adviser leads, so we won't pretend there's a benchmark. For the worked example we use 10% of shared leads becoming an attended meeting. That's a scenario input, not a derived figure; move it in the calculator below.

What does chasing a lead cost you in time?

This is the part nobody invoices you for. Unbiased recommends ten contact points over ten days, and its terms expect at least five documented contact attempts before most refund requests. Call it 30 minutes per lead across calls, texts, emails and CRM notes, which is our assumption rather than a published figure.

Time cost per lead = 30 minutes × your hourly value. At £75 an hour, that's £37.50 on top of whatever the lead cost.

£75 an hour is an illustrative figure; many advisers would put their time higher, and a meeting that goes as far as a fact-find costs a lot more (NextWealth estimates 32 hours of staff time to onboard one new client). A booked meeting has no chase time. A show has none and carries no no-show risk.

Worked example: £5,000 four ways

£5,000 spent on each option. Everything in this table is illustrative: a £30 shared lead, a £149 exclusive lead (Lead Tech's "from" price), a £193 Unbiased level 5 enquiry and a £500 show. Chasing is 30 minutes per lead at £75 an hour. Exclusive leads and directory enquiries reach an attended meeting 50% of the time, shared leads 10%, and a show is a meeting by definition. 25% of meetings become clients.

Shared leads look like the bargain: 166.7 records for your money. But 83.3 hours of chasing for about 16.7 meetings takes them to £680 per attended meeting, the worst on the table.

The exclusive £149 lead wins at these assumptions: £370 per meeting, against £500 for a show. That's the honest result on these inputs. The break-even is about 37% of exclusive leads becoming an attended meeting: below that, the show costs less per meeting, and at 25% (Unbiased's after-24-hours booking rate, before any no-shows) the same lead costs about £750 per meeting.

The shared-lead result is just as sensitive. At these prices and chase times, a £30 shared lead matches the exclusive lead per meeting if about 18% of shared leads become meetings, and matches a show at about 14%. If yours do better than the first figure, shared leads beat both.

Two things the table can't show. Pot size: the leads have no guaranteed floor, while every InvestmentsBooked show is with someone who has declared £250k+ in DC pensions, reconfirmed on the call. And the no-show: a lead that books and then doesn't turn up is money gone, while a show that doesn't happen is credited back.

Try it with your own numbers

What's the difference between an exclusive lead and an exclusive show?

Exclusivity answers "who else is calling this person?" It doesn't answer "will I ever speak to them?" or "how big is their pension?" That's where the unit you pay for matters:

• Pay per lead (shared or exclusive): most of the commercial risk is yours. Invalid details and off-spec leads are often replaced or credited under the supplier's rejection policy, but if a genuine person doesn't answer, doesn't book or doesn't convert, you've usually paid.
• Pay per booking: the supplier does the contact and books a time. You carry the no-show. Lead Pronto, for instance, publishes 82% attendance, so about one paid booking in five or six doesn't happen.
• Pay per show: the supplier carries the no-show. You pay for meetings that took place.

InvestmentsBooked sells the last one: £500 per qualified show, £250k–£3m in DC pensions, one firm per appointment and never resold. If the prospect doesn't turn up, the credit goes back; if their pensions turn out under £250k on the call, or under the higher minimum band you selected, the show is credited. Credits that come back to your balance (a no-show, a cancellation that isn't rebooked, a disqualification or any other credit) come back with a fresh 6-month expiry. We don't quote conversion results we can't evidence, and how we source and qualify prospects is on lead quality. The full rules are on pricing, and how it works explains the booking and brief. If you're quick on the phone and convert exclusive leads above the break-even, buy exclusive leads instead; the maths above says so.

What are the red flags in an "exclusive" lead offer?

• Exclusivity that isn't in the contract. A line on the website isn't a term. Ask for the clause.
• Distribution "agreed per campaign". That can be fine, but it means exclusivity is a setting you have to ask for. Confirm yours.
• Linked brands. Some suppliers run several consumer sites. RMT, for example, names ifa-direct.com and regulatedadvice.co.uk as its lead-generation sites. That's disclosed and legitimate; just ask whether a prospect can reach you and a competitor through two brands.
• Aged or unsold stock. Leads that didn't sell in real time and are offered later at a discount have lost most of their speed value.
• "Exclusive" with no pot floor. Being the only adviser calling someone with a £30k pot doesn't help a firm with a £250k minimum.
• No attendance terms. If a booked appointment doesn't happen, what do you pay? If the answer isn't written down, assume you pay.

For how to check a supplier's sourcing and consent before you buy, see lead quality and pension lead red flags. InvestmentsBooked is not authorised by the FCA and does not give financial advice.

Figures checked 27 September 2026. Sources: Bark UK terms; Bark credit pricing; Unbiased Pro pricing; Unbiased enquiry prices; Unbiased refund policy; Unbiased terms; Unbiased quick response article, Nov 2024; Unbiased contact cadence; VouchedFor enquiry pricing; VouchedFor refunds; uprosper; LeadCrowd; Lurvo; GlobalLeads; Professional Leads; Lead Tech; Lead Pronto; RMT Direct; ADsorbed; NextWealth FABB 2026 (Money Marketing). The worked example and calculator use the illustrative assumptions stated above, not supplier data.

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