SKILL.md
Advisor Dashboards
Core Concepts
1. Practice-Level KPIs
Key performance indicators for advisory practices fall into several categories, each measuring a different dimension of firm health. A well-designed KPI framework provides both a snapshot of current performance and the trend data needed to identify emerging risks or opportunities.
AUM (Assets Under Management). The foundational metric for any AUM-based advisory practice. Total firm AUM is the product of client count, average relationship size, and market performance. AUM should be tracked at multiple levels: firm total, by advisor or team, by client segment (high-net-worth, mass affluent, institutional), by account type (taxable, IRA, trust, plan), and by custodian. AUM changes decompose into two components — market appreciation/depreciation and net new assets — and tracking each separately reveals whether growth is organic (advisor-driven) or market-driven.
Revenue. Total advisory revenue, broken down by fee type (AUM-based fees, financial planning fees, hourly fees, performance fees, other), by advisor or team, by client segment, and by billing period. The effective fee rate (total revenue divided by average AUM) is a critical derived metric that reveals fee compression trends over time. Revenue should be tracked on both an accrual basis (for GAAP reporting) and a cash basis (for cash flow management).
Client Count. The number of active client households, tracked by segment, advisor, and tenure. Distinguish between households (the billing and relationship unit) and accounts (the custodial unit). A firm with 500 households might have 2,000 accounts. Client count trends — net new households per quarter, attrition rate, and average household tenure — reveal the health of the firm's client acquisition and retention efforts.
Revenue Per Client. Average annual revenue per household, segmented by client tier. This metric exposes whether the firm is growing revenue through larger relationships or by adding many small ones. Declining revenue per client may indicate fee compression, client downsizing, or an acquisition strategy that targets smaller relationships than the firm's economics require.
Average Account Size. Total AUM divided by the number of accounts (or households). Tracked over time, this metric reveals whether the firm is attracting larger or smaller relationships. When combined with revenue per client, it exposes effective fee rate trends at the client level.
Organic Growth Rate. Net new assets (new client assets plus existing client contributions minus withdrawals minus terminated client assets) divided by beginning-of-period AUM, expressed as an annualized percentage. Organic growth strips out market appreciation to isolate the advisor-driven component of AUM change. Industry benchmarks for healthy RIAs typically target 5-10% annual organic growth. Negative organic growth — even during strong markets — signals that the firm is losing ground despite favorable conditions.