Why Your CAS Margins are Shrinking (And How to Fix It)

2pm ET | 1pm CT

Fixed-fee Client Advisory Services (CAS) only deliver high profitability when operational scope remains under control. Yet many CAS practices watch their P&L erode silently: unnoticed transaction surges, expanding complexity, client growth that goes unbilled.

The gap between top-performing practices and average firms comes down to one thing: visibility.

This session equips CAS leaders with the financial frameworks and methodologies to spot scope creep across their client book.

You’ll learn to benchmark internal health metrics against peer data, understand how to build a systematic approach to scanning your client book for scope drift signals, and use industry profiling (NAICS verticalization) to standardize pricing, staffing, and offboarding workflows. See how these concepts are implemented in practice and leave with a clear roadmap for protecting realization in your own practice.

Upon completing this session, participants will be able to:

• Calculate and benchmark key CAS practice metrics (NCFPP, CAS Margin, fee coverage ratios) to evaluate practice health.
• Identify quantitative scope creep triggers by analyzing client transaction volume surges, trendlines, and spend category shifts that indicate an account has outgrown its fixed fee.
• Evaluate portfolio risk and quantify ‘fees at risk’ using financial distress indicators (cash runway, current ratios, payable stretching) to identify advisory opportunities within distressed accounts.
• Use industry segmentation to identify which client types are most profitable and use peer benchmarking to justify repricing.