Assets Under Advisement (AUA)

Assets under advisement (AUA) is the total value of client assets on which a firm provides advice, including assets it does not directly manage or hold in custody. It is a broader measure than assets under management (AUM), which typically counts only the assets a firm manages on a discretionary basis. A consultant who recommends managers, reviews performance, and advises on allocation, without ever holding the assets or executing trades, is advising on those assets rather than managing them, and would count them in AUA.

Why it matters for family offices

Multi-family offices, investment consultants, and outsourced chief investment officers often quote AUA because it reflects the true scope of their work: much of what they oversee sits with external managers or in assets the family controls directly. The number matters most when families compare providers. A firm advertising a large headline figure may be counting assets it merely reports on, while another firm's smaller AUM figure may represent full discretionary management. Neither is wrong, but they describe different relationships and different levels of responsibility. Fees tend to follow the definition too: advisory fees on advised assets are typically structured differently from management fees on discretionary mandates. When evaluating a provider, families typically ask exactly what a quoted figure includes: discretionary mandates, advisory-only assets, assets under administration, or some blend of all three.

How it shows up in practice

Consider a family with $400 million in total wealth that engages a multi-family office. The firm directly manages $150 million of liquid portfolios under a discretionary mandate, which is AUM. It also advises on the family's private fund positions, a real estate portfolio, and a retained stake in the operating business, none of which it manages or holds. The full $400 million may reasonably appear in the firm's AUA. For the family's own reporting, the distinction matters less than completeness: a consolidated view should capture everything the family owns, however it is managed, so that allocation and risk are measured against the whole balance sheet rather than only the advised slice.