One number, up to 100, for how fast an RIA grows on its own: new clients, new assets and advisors, without buying other firms, against the 100 firms most like it. Every SEC-registered RIA with filings from 2024 and 2026 has one (7,501 firms). A firm that's shrinking goes below zero, as low as −60. It's public, it's updated weekly, and every firm can raise it.
From each firm's Form ADV filings, 2024 to 2026. Growing: the share of its 100 closest peers (by assets and by average client size) it beat, times the points. Shrinking: below zero in proportion to the loss, where a 25% loss takes off all the points.
What the fastest-growing firms do more often, 8 points each. These are the part a firm can change this week.
Acquisitions are taken out the way Organic Growers does: when most of another firm's advisors move over and it stops filing, its assets and clients come off. A jump Form ADV can't explain (usually a merger or accounts moved in from an affiliate) counts no higher than the peers' median. When a firm doesn't report a number, that part drops out and the others are scaled to 60. Asset growth is measured against the market for shrinking: a 60/40 mix of US stocks and bonds (SPY and AGG) between each firm's own two filings, with 5 points of grace because that's an estimate, not the firm's own portfolio. Advisors lost are counted against at least 10 advisors' worth of staff, so one departure at a small firm isn't the whole weight.
851 firms (11%) are below zero: fewer clients, assets behind the market or advisors leaving. Most firms score in the 20s to 50s, and much of what separates them is the drivers: what they do to grow, not only how they grew.
Find any firm's score on its Advicer.bio page. Think a number is wrong? Email joe@advicer.bio; most come from the firm's own Form ADV.