Simon Goldthorpe: How much is your IFA business really worth?

If you're an adviser thinking about selling your business, then you've probably been pondering how much it's worth. The age-old way of valuing an IFA firm is based on recurring income - typically between two to four times the annual amount - but there are major flaws in this rule of thumb in today's market. With the average age of advisers in the UK continuing to rise, selling to an adviser partnership, consolidator, or aggregator has become a key means of allowing business owners to retire and realise value in firms they have worked to build up over many years. While a calculation...