IFA business for sale: what a firm or client bank is worth in 2026

We don't broker, buy or value advice firms, so the valuation figures below come from published deal data, brokers' analyses and the FCA, all dated and linked. What we can add is the other side of the maths. We book pension appointments into advisers' diaries, so when an adviser asks whether to buy a client bank, the question we'd want answered is the same one: what does each pound of recurring income cost you, whichever way you get it?

Where can you find an IFA business for sale?

Most practices and client banks are sold through specialist brokers, and a few buyers advertise for them directly. The sites that list live opportunities include Retiring IFA, IFA Acquisitions, Tomorrow IFA, Berkeley Cannon and IFA Client Sale. Brokers such as Gunner & Co and Chapters Capital run sale processes for owners, and some networks introduce members to client banks for sale (ValidPath says it does). We have no relationship with any of them.

Listings are short, and nearly all quote the same handful of numbers. How to read them:

• Recurring income (RI). The annual ongoing fees. This is what the price is based on.
• Asking price, often "offers over". Divide it by the RI to get the implied multiple, and treat it as a floor for what the seller hopes to get.
• FUM or AUM. Context only. Divide RI by FUM to see the average ongoing fee.
• Households or clients. Divide the price by households to get a per-client figure you can compare across listings.
• Whether the principal stays. A seller who stays for a handover protects the income you're paying for.
• Compliance record. "No upheld or outstanding complaints" is a start. You'll still want file samples and a view on any DB transfer advice.

The rest of this post covers what those numbers should add up to.

How much is an IFA business worth?

Buyers price advice firms on the income that repeats. One-off initial fees and commission get little or no credit. What counts is the ongoing advice charge your clients pay every year, because that's what the buyer can expect to keep collecting after you leave.

Buyers price on recurring income or on profit, and use a per-client figure to sense-check:

Chapters Capital draws the line between the first two methods at about £400,000 of recurring income, while stressing it's a rough guide rather than a rule (Chapters Capital, July 2026). Below it, a buyer is mostly acquiring clients to bolt onto its own business. Above it, the buyer is acquiring a business with its own staff and costs, so profit becomes the better yardstick.

You'll still see listings quoted in funds under management ("£40m FUM"). That's context. A £40m book on 0.5% and a £40m book on 1% are very different businesses, and buyers price the fee.

What multiples are IFA firms selling for in 2026?

No single public index tracks UK advice-firm prices. The best evidence comes from brokers and corporate-finance firms that publish their own deal data. Here's what they report, with what each figure measures:

Prices rose between 2023 and 2025. Gunner & Co put the move from 3.5x to 4.2x down to buyer competition and cheaper debt (Gunner & Co, 30 July 2025). Size is rewarded too: Dyer Baade's larger deals went for well over the multiple paid for smaller ones (Dyer Baade, 10 July 2026), which is the usual pattern in any consolidating market.

Demand isn't only from private equity. The FCA's 2025 survey found 32% of large advice firms plan to acquire another firm or a client bank, and another 26% are considering it (FCA, April 2026). So a small firm with clean files and a sensible fee level has a choice of buyers.

One caution on direction. We couldn't find a published market-wide recurring-income average for the first half of 2026, so don't assume multiples are still rising. The FCA's October 2025 review of consolidators flagged debt, goodwill and liquidity risks in some groups (FCA multi-firm review), and a buyer carrying a lot of debt has less room to overpay.

Multiples are reported by market participants, not an official index, and a headline multiple is not the cash a seller receives (see deal terms). Dyer Baade's figures cover UK wealth management generally, not only IFAs.

How much is an IFA client worth?

Divide the price by the clients. It's the fastest way to sense-check an offer, and it's the number you need if you're weighing up buying a book against winning clients yourself.

Take a client paying £2,000 a year in ongoing fees (an illustrative figure: 0.83% of £250,000 is £2,075, and the FCA's typical client brings in £2,000 of total revenue a year). At a 4x multiple that client is worth about £8,000. Two practices listed for sale in September 2026 show how that plays out:

These are asking prices on Retiring IFA (second listing), both invite offers over the figure shown, so the multiples and per-household amounts are floors, and neither is a completed sale. The gap between them comes almost entirely from fee income per household: about £1,875 in the first and £1,273 in the second. Each client is worth a multiple of what they pay you each year, adjusted for how long they're likely to keep paying.

That last part matters with pension clients. The FCA's survey puts 69% of advised clients' main objective as pensions and retirement, and a client in drawdown is spending the assets your fee is charged on. A buyer will ask how old the book is and how much is being withdrawn each year, and price accordingly.

What raises or lowers the price of an IFA firm?

Buyers use the same checklist whether they're a consolidator or the firm down the road. Roughly in order of how much it moves the number:

1. Evidence that ongoing service is delivered. If clients pay for an annual review, the buyer will sample files to check it happened. The FCA's 2025 review of 22 large firms found reviews delivered in about 83% of cases, clients declined or didn't respond in 15%, and firms made no attempt in under 2% (FCA, 24 February 2025). Gaps become a redress risk the buyer prices in, or a reason for a bigger deferred payment.
2. Fee level and consistency. The average ongoing charge is 0.83% (NextWealth 2026). A book well below that looks cheap to run but may need repricing, which risks attrition. A book well above it invites questions about fair value.
3. Client age and withdrawals. Younger clients, or relationships with the next generation, support a higher multiple. A book of clients drawing heavily from their pensions shrinks every year.
4. Concentration. If ten households pay a third of the fees, losing one of them hurts. Buyers discount for it.
5. Past business, especially DB transfers. The FCA expects a firm selling a client bank to provide for potential redress liabilities first and names DB transfer back books as a concern (FCA expectations for firms selling client banks). Expect a file review and, possibly, money held back.
6. Platform and proposition fit. A book on the same platforms and a similar investment approach to the buyer's moves across with less disruption.
7. Whether you stay. Clients follow people. A seller who stays for a year or two to introduce the new adviser usually gets a better price or better terms.
8. Growth. A book that's still adding clients each year is worth more than one that's slowly shrinking. That's the one factor you can change quickly before a sale, and we come back to it below.

How are IFA business sales structured and paid?

The headline number is what gets quoted in the pub. The terms decide what you actually receive.

Asset sale or share sale

Selling a client bank is usually an asset sale: the buyer takes the clients and goodwill, and your company (with its history) stays with you. Selling the whole company is a share sale, and the buyer takes on its past too. Gunner & Co found 62.5% of H1 2025 offers were asset purchases. If you sell shares in an FCA-authorised firm, the buyer must notify the FCA and get approval under section 178 of FSMA before control changes (FCA change in control).

Deferred consideration and earn-outs

Chapters Capital gives 50% on completion, 25% at 12 months and 25% at 24 months as a fairly typical structure, with earn-outs generally running one to three years. For a retiring seller, the later payments usually depend on how many clients or how much recurring income the buyer keeps. So a "4x" deal where 20% of clients leave in the first year pays out noticeably less than 4x.

Ask these before you sign:

• What exactly triggers a reduction in the deferred payments, and is it measured on clients, households or income?
• Does market movement count against you if fees are charged as a percentage of assets?
• Who pays for any redress on advice you gave, and is money held back to cover it?
• How is the buyer funding the deal, and what happens to your deferred payments if the buyer is itself sold?

Clients and the regulator

The buying firm needs a written client agreement with each client it takes on, and the FCA says firms should talk to it about clients who don't respond rather than treat silence as consent (FCA guidance on transferring investment business). The seller should make a SUP 15 notification where the sale could affect its risk profile or resources, check the buyer can keep up the service clients pay for, and consider an independent valuation.

Tax

Where Business Asset Disposal Relief applies, capital gains tax on qualifying disposals is 18% from 6 April 2026, up from 14% in 2025/26, with a £1m lifetime limit (HMRC rates and allowances). Structure affects whether you qualify, so get tax advice early.

How do you sell an IFA business?

The sellers who get the best terms usually start two or three years out. A workable order:

1. Decide what you want. Retire in 12 months? Sell and stay on for three years? Keep the best clients? The answer points you to different buyers.
2. Get your numbers straight. Recurring income by client, fee rates, ages, platforms and the last two years of review evidence. Buyers ask for all of it.
3. Fix the files. Missing reviews and undocumented advice come off the price or go into the clawback.
4. Choose a route. A consolidator, a local independent firm, your own network's buyer programme, or an internal sale to a colleague. The brokers listed above run sale processes and market practices.
5. Compare offers on terms as well as the headline price. Upfront percentage, clawback triggers, who handles the client letters, and what happens to your staff.
6. Complete the regulatory steps. Change-in-control approval for a share sale, SUP 15 notification, client agreements, and a redress provision if the FCA's expectations require one.
7. Hand over properly. Introduce the new adviser in person where you can. This protects your deferred payments as much as it protects clients.

If you're in a network, read your AR agreement before you talk to buyers. Some contracts give the network rights over the client bank or a say in who buys it. We cover what to check in IFA networks in the UK.

Is it cheaper to buy a client bank or buy appointments?

This is the question to ask if you're building an advice firm. Buying a book and paying for new client meetings are both ways of buying recurring income. They just price it differently.

Take our published price of £500 per qualified show and a 25% show-to-client rate (the default in our calculators; your rate depends on your fees, speed and proposition). That's £2,000 of appointment spend per new client. If that client pays £2,000 a year in ongoing fees, you've spent about £1 for each £1 of recurring income, and you'd also collect an initial fee (the reported average minimum initial fee is £1,949: NextWealth Financial Advice Business Benchmarks 2026, as reported by Professional Paraplanner, 10 September 2026), though that fee pays for advice work you still have to do. The book at 4x costs £4 per pound before loan interest and handover losses.

Read those two numbers as narrow acquisition-cost illustrations. They don't show that one route costs a quarter as much overall, for four reasons:

• Time. A book of 150 clients arrives on one completion date. Building 150 clients from first meetings takes years, and your diary has a ceiling.
• Work. NextWealth estimates a new client takes about 32 hours of staff time to onboard (NextWealth, September 2026). Bought clients need onboarding too, but not the first meeting, the fact-find and the recommendation.
• Conversion risk. Some months you'll convert fewer shows than you planned. With a book, the seller's past income is known, though what you keep depends on client agreements, fees, markets and the handover.
• What comes with a book. Existing relationships, and sometimes staff, systems and a local name. Appointments bring none of that.

For a seller, the maths runs the other way. Every new client who stays adds roughly four times their annual fee to what the firm is worth. A £2,000-a-year client costing £2,000 to win adds about £8,000 of value at a 4x multiple. That's one reason some owners focus on organic growth in the years before a sale. For buyers, the two routes aren't exclusive. Plenty of firms buy a book and then need new clients to replace the ones who leave.

Illustrative. The 25% show-to-client rate is an assumption; at 10% the cost per client is £5,000 and at 40% it's £1,250. InvestmentsBooked appointments are with people who self-declare £250k+ in defined-contribution pensions, reconfirmed on the call. Your results depend on your fees, speed and proposition.

Client-value calculator: buy a book or build one?

Put in the book you're looking at (or your own, if you're selling) and your assumptions for winning new clients. It compares what each pound of recurring income costs both ways, and how long the organic route would take.

Illustrative only, not a valuation or financial advice. Book price = recurring income × multiple. Income after 3 years assumes the loss rate you set, with no market growth and no new clients. Appointment route: new clients needed = recurring income ÷ ongoing fee per client; shows = clients ÷ show-to-client rate; cost = shows × £500. "After gross initial fees" subtracts the initial fees new clients pay, before any cost of delivering the advice, so it overstates the saving. Ignores loan interest, deferred-payment adjustments, staff and adviser time, prospects who don't convert and the 32 hours or so of onboarding per client, and compares income, not numbers of relationships. InvestmentsBooked has a minimum purchase of 10 appointments (£5,000).

On the defaults, the book costs four times as much per pound of income but arrives on completion day. The appointment route costs far less per pound but, at three first meetings a week, takes about four years to match a £300,000 book. Most growing firms end up doing some of each: buying when a good book comes up, and filling the diary in between. If you want to see where our appointments fit, the pricing calculator runs the same cost-per-client maths against initial and ongoing fees on £250k, £500k and £1m pots, how it works covers what counts as a qualified show, and appointment types lists the four kinds of first meeting we book, all at the same price.

Related reading: how many clients a financial adviser needs (and how many you lose each year), and what UK advisers charge, which drives every number above.

Figures checked 27 September 2026. Sources: Chapters Capital, How to value an IFA client book in 2026 (15 July 2026, updated 8 September 2026); Gunner & Co, Valuation multiples in IFA M&A market (30 July 2025); IFA Acquisitions listing for client banks of £50m+ (live September 2026); Dyer Baade & Company, UK wealth management M&A 2026 mid-year review (10 July 2026); Heligan Group IFA report (March 2026); Retiring IFA listings 32072 and the £30m FUM East Midlands bolt-on (September 2026); FCA, Understanding the financial advice market: financial advice firms survey 2025 (23 April 2026); FCA, Expectations for firms selling client banks (updated 14 January 2025); FCA guidance on client agreements when transferring investment business; FCA change in control; FCA ongoing advice services review findings (24 February 2025); FCA multi-firm review of consolidation (31 October 2025); HMRC Budget 2025 rates and allowances; NextWealth Fee Benchmarking 2026 and Financial Advice Business Benchmarks 2026. Worked examples and the calculator are illustrative. InvestmentsBooked is not authorised by the FCA and does not give financial advice, tax advice or valuations.

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