Ready for the RIA Benchmarking Study or considering it for the first time?
Participating will help you gain key insights to plan for the future of your firm, understand your competitive strengths, and identify possible opportunities, no matter the size of your firm. This powerful resource is available at no cost as part of your relationship with Schwab.
You can have confidence in the robust peer data the study provides with more than a thousand firms participating each year, a majority of which are repeat participants. You can see how your business is performing compared with firms of a similar size across measures of growth, profitability, productivity, staffing, and more.
Here’s what the study looks like. These first six tabs make up the main portion of the study. The last tab is the compensation section, which is optional and remains locked until the main portion of the study is submitted. The Validate Data button is helpful to understand what’s left to complete.
Be assured, any data that you enter in the study is held in the strictest confidence. We publish high-level summaries of the results with only aggregated data to conceal any individual firm’s response.
Right after you submit the main portion of the study, you’ll get this immediate snapshot with high-level trends. This complements the detailed customized peer report with hundreds of metrics that you’ll receive this summer.
Here’s a sample of the type of information you’ll receive in your detailed peer report. This sample report is based on a fictitious test firm. On this page, you can see this firm’s data and also the results for firms in its peer group.
We define peer groups by assets under management, so you’ll have a similar set of firms as comparisons.
If you complete the compensation section, you’ll receive the compensation report this summer and have access to the online compensation tool.
Here’s a sample page from the Compensation report, showing salary, incentive pay, and ownership data for one out of 27 roles at the national level and also at the regional level. The online tool enables you to filter this data in a dynamic way.
Allow some time if this is your first year completing the study, as you’ll be gathering data and the questions will be new to you.
Advisors that have recently participated will notice that much of the study data is prepopulated to help streamline the data entry process.
The study open date is shown here. You can return to change data and resubmit up until 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time / 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the close date. Only firms that complete the online study by the deadline will receive the customized benchmarking reports.
To get started: Visit advisorservices.schwab.com/benchmarking to access the study. You will need to log in with your Schwab Advisor Center ID. The module on the benchmarking page will take you to the study.
If you have any questions at all, please contact your Account or Relationship Manager. You can also email riabenchmarking@schwab.com. We hope you find this to be a valuable resource, and we look forward to your participation.