How RIA Ascent measures a firm

The RIAAS score

RIAAS — the RIA Ascent Score — reads an SEC-registered firm's filings across four families of factors: financial strength, operations, strategic position, and readiness for what comes next. Each is measured against benchmarks for firms like it, and together they make one score from 0 to 100. It covers SEC-registered advisers that report assets under management today; state-registered scoring is on the way.

Confidence

Every score carries a confidence level: how much of it we could measure rather than estimate. A score built from public filings alone carries lower confidence. As a firm adds what filings can't show, and attests to it, confidence rises. Answering never lowers confidence. A real answer can move the score either way, because it replaces an estimate with a fact.

The Firm Portrait

The Firm Portrait is an estimate of what the market might pay for a firm with your profile. It starts from the value of your assets under management at the multiples firms of your size trade at, then adjusts for how your growth compares with the market and for your compliance history. The range around it tightens as confidence rises.

It assumes a sale to an outside buyer at market terms. An internal succession, a sale where the owner stays on to run the practice, or a deal weighted toward earn-outs and deferred payments can price quite differently, even at the same headline multiple.

For smaller, owner-operated practices, buyers often price on revenue or on earnings before owner compensation, because what the owners pay themselves shapes the margin a filing implies. The Portrait doesn't model that yet. Revenue- and owner-compensation-based ranges are coming, along with more of the situations real transactions involve.

What it is not

The Firm Portrait is an indicative estimate. It is not an appraisal or a fairness opinion, and neither it nor the score is legal, tax, accounting or investment advice.

Where the numbers come from

Public filings: every firm's Form ADV, from the SEC and state regulators, refreshed monthly.

Market data: published industry research — including RIA benchmarking studies from Fidelity and Schwab, reporting from InvestmentNews and WealthManagement.com, and research from Kitces — index returns from S&P, Bloomberg and MSCI, and other reputable public and private sources. We refine it with experts who transact in this space frequently, including M&A practitioners.

We will keep updating and sharing parts of our methodology, but it is proprietary, and it will keep changing as market conditions and expert opinion change.

Why sharing helps

Your first score and estimate rest on public filings and broad assumptions for firms your size. Each thing you share replaces an assumption with a fact about your firm, so your own picture gets more accurate — and as more firms join and share, the benchmarks every firm is compared against get better too. How we use your data explains who sees what you share.