Frequently asked questions.

Yes. Partial sales are common and you do not need to sell your entire business.

Advisers sell a portion of their client base for all sorts of reasons — reducing client numbers, releasing capital, stepping back from one part of the business, or focusing on the clients they most want to keep. The clients you retain stay yours.

Yes. An adviser may choose to sell mortgage clients while retaining insurance or KiwiSaver clients, or sell a KiwiSaver book while continuing to write risk business.

Where a book is mixed, we look at each revenue stream separately, because buyer demand and multiples differ between them.

No. There is no brokerage, listing or success fee charged to the seller for using The Client Base. You may still incur your own legal, accounting or other professional costs associated with completing a transaction.

We are paid by the buyer side of a transaction, not by you. That is why there is no brokerage, listing or success fee charged to the seller.

It does not change the price a buyer is willing to pay for your client base, and it does not oblige you to accept any particular buyer. If you decide not to proceed, nothing is payable by anyone.

Only on the details you give us — the email address and phone number you enter on the form. We do not contact you through your office, your staff, your adviser group or anyone else.

If there are times or ways you would rather we did not get in touch, tell us in the notes field and we will follow it.

No. Your client base is never listed publicly, and there is no public marketplace on this website or anywhere else.

Not unless you approve the release of identifying information.

When we discuss a client base with a prospective buyer, we talk in general terms — book type, approximate size, region and characteristics. Your name, your business name and your client information stay with us until you tell us otherwise.

No. Many advisers request an appraisal long before deciding whether to proceed, sometimes years before.

Understanding what your client base may be worth is useful information for succession planning, retirement planning and business decisions generally, whether or not you ever sell.

Recurring revenue multiples are a useful starting point, and the indicative ranges on this site will give you a rough sense of the market.

In practice, two books with the same recurring revenue can be worth materially different amounts. Retention, client demographics, revenue quality, concentration, provider mix and how easily the relationships transfer all affect what a buyer will pay — as does which buyers happen to be looking for a book like yours at the time.

It depends on the client base and on what you want from the transaction. Buyer selection, due diligence, documentation and the transition process all take time, and the right buyer is not always the fastest one to move.

We will not guarantee you a timeframe. What we can do is tell you honestly, once we understand your book, what a realistic process looks like.

Initially only basic information: the type of client base, approximate recurring revenue, approximate client numbers and region.

If you want a more accurate appraisal, or you decide to proceed, additional information may be requested at that point. We do not ask for client names or client data to give you an initial view.

Buyers generally look at recurring revenue, client count, retention, client demographics, client concentration, provider mix, CRM and data quality, how dependent the relationships are on you personally, and what transition arrangements are available.

Not every buyer weighs these the same way, which is part of why buyer selection matters.

Transaction structures vary. They may include payment at settlement, deferred consideration, retention adjustments tied to clients remaining after a period, or staged payments over an agreed term.

Structure is often as important as the headline multiple, and it is something we will talk through with you rather than assume.