There is no published New Zealand benchmark for this, and anyone quoting one is guessing. How to build the number from your own capacity instead.
Figures in this article describe the wider market and are drawn from the third-party sources listed at the end. They are not Lead Foundry results, and nothing here is a projection of what any individual broker will achieve.
Advisers ask what a normal number of new clients per month looks like, hoping for a benchmark. There is not one, and the honest response is to explain why and then give a method.
Because nobody publishes it. The FMA publishes structural data about the advice population, reporting just over 3,000 financial advice businesses, 1,807 Financial Advice Providers, 1,200 Authorised Bodies, 10,743 financial advisers and 12,287 nominated representatives, with 82% of providers having fewer than ten advisers. It does not publish client acquisition rates per adviser, and no industry body does either.
Figures circulating in the market come from suppliers and consultants, whose interest in the number being a particular size is obvious.
What to do with any number you are quoted: Ask what it was measured on. A benchmark with no sample, no period and no definition of a client is an assertion, and adopting it as a target imports somebody else's assumptions into your business plan.
Four steps, all using data you already hold.
| Step | The calculation | Worked shape |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Calling capacity | Weekly hours for new enquiries ÷ 35 minutes per lead | Gives leads workable per week |
| 2. Monthly capacity | Weekly figure × 4.3, then take 80% | The 20% covers resulting appointments |
| 3. Conversations | Monthly capacity × contact rate | From your own CRM |
| 4. New clients | Conversations × conversion rate | Your realistic target |
The 80% step is the one advisers skip and the one that keeps the model honest. Every lead that converts produces meetings, applications and file work, and that work comes out of the same week.
Because a revenue-derived target is a wish unless capacity supports it. Setting a target above capacity does not produce more clients; it produces more purchased records that receive one call each.
Given that contact odds fall by a factor of 100 between a five and thirty minute response, records worked late perform badly enough to drag the whole batch's numbers down, which then reads as a supplier problem.
The last one is the only lever that increases output without increasing time, which is why supplier quality is a capacity question as much as a cost question.
Treat it as a capacity statement rather than a goal. Review it quarterly, and when you want it higher, work out which of the four levers you are pulling before increasing supply.
There is no published New Zealand benchmark, and figures quoted in the market are supplier or consultant estimates rather than measurements. Build the number from your own calling capacity, contact rate and conversion rate: weekly hours divided by about 35 minutes per lead, times 4.3 for the month, times 80%, then multiplied by your contact and conversion rates.
Because nobody publishes it. The FMA publishes structural data on the advice population, including 1,807 Financial Advice Providers and 10,743 financial advisers, but not client acquisition rates per adviser, and no industry body collects it. Any circulating figure comes from a party with an interest in its size.
From capacity. A revenue-derived target that exceeds what you can work produces purchased records receiving one call each rather than more clients, and because contact odds decay so sharply, those records perform badly enough to make the whole channel look ineffective.
Automate delivery, assignment and the follow-up cadence, protect calling blocks, buy back administrative hours since roughly 60% of a sales professional's time is non-selling work, and improve contact rate through better supply. The last is the only lever that raises output without raising hours.