With a new service targeting advisors, BizEquity says it wants to put the value back in valuations.

The Philadelphia-based business valuation specialist announced on Monday the launch of an online service that offers free valuations for financial advisors.

“We’re offering an actual valuation [report] to advisors for free. This isn’t just an estimated value based on a couple of questions,” says Mike Carter, BizEquity CEO. “In the past, valuation has been time consuming and expensive. We’re putting it online, democratizing it and bringing the Amazon effect to business valuation.”

The report is the only free, detailed valuation available to advisors, says Carter.

The offer applies to advisor businesses of all sizes, including sole practitioners, according to BizEquity.

The new service is a partnership between BizEquity and Eatontown, N.J.-based Discovery Data, a provider of financial advisor data.

In addition to a real-time valuation, advisors will also be able to create a 29-page valuation report with four different valuation parameters: liquidation, assets, equity and enterprise. The new service is offered via BizEquity’s website.

The valuations help advisors fulfill a proposed rule to require advisors to create succession and continuity plans, says Carter. While broker-dealers are already required to engage in succession planning, advisors weren’t bound by any such provision until the past few years, when individual states adopted requirements.

“The first step to creating a succession plan is to know what you’re worth,” says Carter. “This is a value-added service to the industry.”

In 2015, the North American Securities Administrators Association issued a model rule mandating succession planning for state regulated advisors, which has led to several states implementing their own regulations. In the summer of 2016, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule to require continuity planning for all advisors.

The Discovery Data partnership provides BizEquity access to data on 40,000 RIAs and 700,000 registered representatives, including an estimated 289,000 practicing financial advisors, enabling users of the new service to compare themselves against the financial advisor community.

“It felt to us like BizEquity was the perfect fit to enhance the valuation of an advisor’s practice,” says Bob Hermann, CEO of Discovery Data. “We have extensive data on the firms in the industry.”

Carter views the service as a “dividend” to advisors from BizEquity and Discovery Data. The free valuations are also intended to introduce advisors to BizEquity’s Advisor Office subscription valuation service.

In recent remarks, Carter has indicated that advisors will play a huge role in BizEquity’s future prospects. The company has 2,000 advisors as clients on its Advisor Office platform, with a goal of attracting 20,000 advisor clients by 2020.

The new service will not include practice management advice or recommendations to help advisors optimize their valuations, Carter notes.

Since its 2011 launch, BizEquity says it has developed 33.2 million valuations for businesses globally using its proprietary model and has helped more than 200,000 small businesses determine their value.