Guides / Valuation

What is a financial advisor book of business worth in 2026?

The named Canadian deals we can document closed at a median of 3.00x recurring revenue, inside a range running from 1.00x to 3.25x. The spread, not the median, is what determines what your book is worth.

Key takeaways

• Canadian realized deals with a disclosed multiple in our research set have a median of 3.00x recurring revenue and a range of 1.00x to 3.25x, on a sample of only five deals.
• Canada uses two conventions: a multiple of recurring revenue (roughly 2x to 3.5x net of grid) and a percentage of assets under administration (roughly 1% to 2%).
• The same revenue can be worth two or three times as much depending on recurring mix, client concentration, whether the sale is open market or internal, and how long the seller stays.
• Investment Executive states plainly that there is no Canadian database of past transactions available for valuation reference, which is why every published Canadian number is a range rather than a comparable.
• BookVest publishes 1.8x to 3.5x as its defensible range for Canadian open-market recurring revenue. The top end is above the 2.5x figure two named Canadian buyers called the industry standard, because both of them paid more than it.

The Canadian deals we can actually document, with a named buyer and a disclosed price, closed at a median of 3.00x recurring revenue, inside a range that runs from 1.00x to 3.25x. That is five deals. It is the entire publicly reported Canadian evidence base with a stated revenue multiple, and it is the honest starting point for anyone asking what a book of business is worth in 2026.

The spread is the real answer, not the median. One Ontario buyer paid one year's revenue for a 20-household book, and another paid 3.25 times recurring revenue for a 60-household book of engaged clients. Same asset class, same country, roughly the same period, and a factor of more than three between them. Nothing about the size of the book explained the gap. What explained it was concentration, client engagement, buyer competition and how the seller left.

So the useful question is not "what is the multiple" but "which end of the range does my book sit at, and what moves it". This guide answers that with the Canadian evidence that exists, and is explicit about where the evidence runs out. If you want a calibrated range for your own numbers, run your book through the calculator first and read this alongside the output.

The two Canadian conventions

Canadian buyers and sellers price books two ways, and it matters which one is on the table because the two are not interchangeable.

A multiple of recurring revenue. This is the dominant convention and the more defensible of the two, because it prices the cash flow the buyer actually inherits. The Canadian practitioner ranges published in Investment Executive are 2x to 3.5x of recurring revenue net of grid payments from Julia Haggerty of Advisor Finance, and 2x to 4x of recurring revenue from George Hartman of Market Logics. Note the phrase "net of grid". A book generating $600,000 gross at a 60% payout is a $360,000 book to the advisor, and applying a multiple to the wrong figure is the most common arithmetic error in these conversations.

A percentage of assets under administration. Hartman puts the Canadian rule of thumb at 1% to 2% of AUA. The one Canadian deal in our set priced this way was Mike Berton's internal sale of 45 client relationships at Assante Financial Management in Vancouver, at 1.75% of AUM adjusted for retention. Because that was an internal sale to an associate in his own branch, which should price at the low end, 1.75% reads as a reasonable midpoint rather than a ceiling.

The percentage-of-AUA shortcut is popular because AUA is the number every advisor knows without pulling a report. It is also blind to the thing that determines value: whether those assets pay. A book with $80M of AUA earning 55 basis points and a book with $80M earning 95 basis points are the same number on a statement and very different businesses. Use AUA to sanity check a revenue-based number, not to replace it. Our comparison of AUM and revenue multiples works through where each one breaks.

Ranges by book profile

These are the bands our model uses, each anchored to published evidence rather than a house view. All figures are multiples of recurring revenue unless stated.

Individual life insurance books do not follow this grid. They price against annual renewal commissions, generally 3x to 4x, scaled by in-force premium: the Insurance Journal Business Value Index publishes 5x for in-force premium at or above C$1M, 4x for C$500k to C$999k, and 3x below C$500k. Do not carry an investment multiple across to an insurance block.

Why the same revenue can be worth very different amounts

Two books at $500,000 of recurring revenue can settle at $500,000 and $1,750,000. The drivers behind that gap, in rough order of how well they are evidenced:

• Recurring versus non-recurring mix. The clearest Canadian measurement available: recurring revenue averaged 2.31x against 1.08x for non-recurring in FP Transitions data reported for Canadian book sales, so a dollar of recurring revenue is worth roughly twice a dollar of transactional revenue (Advisor.ca).
• Client concentration and assets per household. The 1.0x Canadian deal was repriced specifically because one client held 20% of the book's assets and the book held only 20 households. Investment Executive puts the same point the other way: $50M spread across 2,000 clients "isn't worth much", while $50M across 50 to 60 households is worth a lot.
• Open market versus internal. Competition is the price mechanism. One GTA book reportedly drew around 30 bids. An internal successor bids against nobody.
• Seller transition. Wealth Professional reports 5x revenue as achievable only for very high asset-per-client books combined with multi-year seller involvement, with a quick exit priced nearer 2x. That is a broker claim, not closed-deal data, but the direction is consistent with everything else.
• Infrastructure. A $40M book with no assistant, no CRM and no segmentation can be worth less than a well-run $30M book (Insurance Portal).
• Transferability. Canadian transfers require written client authorization, and client information cannot be moved without prior written client consent (CIRO). The one documented Canadian cross-channel deal records that the negotiation was made more complex because it ran from an IIROC seller to an MFDA buyer (Investment Executive cover story).

Structure sits alongside all of this and can matter more than the headline number. Twyla Hardham's deal became a share purchase rather than the asset purchase she preferred because the seller wanted the lifetime capital gains exemption (Globe Advisor). Wealth Professional makes the arithmetic explicit: a captive program paying 2x gross revenue as ordinary income can net a seller less than a third of a 4x share sale qualifying for the LCGE. Share versus asset sale, holdbacks and LCGE eligibility are tax and legal questions. Take them to your own accountant and lawyer before you agree a price, because the multiple you accept and the money you keep are different figures.

Nobody publishes Canadian comparables

This is the part most valuation content skips. Investment Executive states it outright: "There is no database or organized practice exchange in Canada in which past transactions can be used as references for valuation." Nothing in our research contradicts that. There is no Canadian equivalent of the annual closed-deal reports published in the United States, no Canadian percentile or quartile of realized multiples anywhere, and Canadian dealer and MGA acquisitions are announced without terms.

Two consequences follow. First, any Canadian valuation, including ours, is calibrated primarily on US closed-deal distributions adjusted by Canadian practitioner ranges and a small number of Canadian anecdotes. We say so in the methodology rather than hiding it. Second, when a firm quotes you a confident single number for a Canadian book, ask what it is drawn from. In one Investment Executive article, one broker put gross recurring revenue at 3x to 4x while another in the same story put it at 1.5x to 2.5x. Both cannot be the market.

What to do about it: treat published ranges as a prior, then get real price discovery. That means exposing the book to more than one buyer. It is the only mechanism in this market that produces a price rather than an opinion, which is why our anonymized listings exist and why listing confidentially beats accepting the first internal offer.

Why BookVest publishes 1.8x to 3.5x

Our defensible published range for Canadian open-market recurring revenue is 1.8x to 3.5x. The low end covers internal, captive and small or concentrated books, and it needs to go that low: the realized Canadian evidence includes a deal at 1.0x, and any range that cannot produce sub-2x outputs for a weak book is mis-specified.

The top end is deliberately above the 2.5x that gets repeated as the Canadian industry standard, for one reason: the two named Canadian buyers who used that phrase both used it to describe a number they had just exceeded. Sanche paid 3.25x and called it exceeding the industry standard of 2.5 times. Hardham paid three times recurring revenue and used the same wording. A range that stopped at 2.5x would exclude most of the Canadian deals we can actually document.

Worked through, on a book with $400,000 of recurring revenue net of grid: 1.8x is $720,000, 3.0x is $1,200,000 and 3.5x is $1,400,000. That is a $680,000 spread on identical revenue, and closing it is a matter of preparation and process rather than negotiation skill.

What we do not claim

An estimate is not an appraisal. The best-documented accuracy benchmark in this industry is FP Transitions grading its own certified valuations against realized prices on deals it brokered, with full access to the books, which landed between 94% and 107% of the actual selling price. No web form beats that, and we do not pretend to. On the other side, a Canadian marketplace operator has reported seeing a valuation report come in at 20 per cent of what the business actually transacted for, and adds that the only real test of a valuation is when you go into a deal.

BookVest is not a broker. We take no commission, do not negotiate, and do not represent either side. What we publish is a calibrated estimate range with the sources behind it, so you can argue with the inputs.

Start with the free valuation estimate, read how the model is calibrated, and if you are heading into an actual negotiation, the holding-level precision report is the version you can hand to your accountant.

Common questions

What is the average multiple for a Canadian advisor book of business?

Across the five Canadian deals in our research set that disclosed a revenue multiple, the median is 3.00x recurring revenue and the mean is 2.65x. That sample is far too small to call an average for the market, and four of the five sit at 3.00x or 3.25x, which is likely a reporting artefact of trade-press coverage rather than the true distribution. Treat it as an upper-middle estimate, not a centre.

Is a book of business valued on AUM or on revenue in Canada?

Both conventions are in use. Revenue multiples are more common and more defensible because they capture what the book actually pays the advisor. Percentage of assets under administration, typically quoted at 1% to 2%, is used as a shortcut, and one documented Canadian internal sale was priced at 1.75% of AUM adjusted for retention.

Why do published valuation ranges differ so much between firms?

Because most of them are marketing rather than transaction data. A dealer, a broker or a consolidator publishes a range that reflects the deals it wants to do. In one Investment Executive article two brokers quoted 3x to 4x and 1.5x to 2.5x of gross recurring revenue in the same story. Ask any source whether its range comes from closed deals with a stated sample size.

Does a formal valuation guarantee I will get that price?

No. The most transparent scorecard in the industry is FP Transitions grading its own certified valuations against realized prices on deals it brokered, and those came in between 94% and 107% of the eventual price. A Canadian marketplace operator has reported seeing valuation reports come in at 20 per cent of what the business actually transacted for. A valuation is a starting position for negotiation.