Adviser numbers drop below 15,600
Financial adviser numbers have dropped below 15,600 over the past week, reinforcing the tentative nature of the recovery from the large scale exits over the past four years.
The latest analysis from WealthData shows that as the profession enters the last quarter of the financial year, adviser churn between licensees is the dominant factor.
WealthData principal, Colin Williams has examined adviser numbers and movements in financial year to date terms and compared them with the same period last financial year:
- In the previous period, the net loss of advisers was (-318) – Most of this was driven by the final cut-off for passing the Financial Adviser Exam, for experienced advisers in Sept 2022
- The number of new licensees that commenced is running much the same at 100 Vs 101. Ceased licensees are reasonably close too, at (-52) Vs (-65). Virtually all new licensees are what we now term as ‘Micro AFSLs’. For example, 49 of the new licensees currently only have one adviser. Members can see this data on Dashboard 3 of Adviser Fast Facts.
- The top four growth licensee owners are firms that currently have 200 or more advisers. These are then followed by five small licensee owners, who despite the jump in growth, still have less than 40 advisers
- As for least growth, Count Limited is at (-59) – Important to state that Count is carrying the losses for firms purchased, including Affinia and all licensees associated with Diverger
- Two mid-tier firms are out of business, Financial Link Group (NextGen) and Crown Wealth. Between them, representing net losses of (-81).
- AMP and Insignia are showing losses of (-40) and (-39) respectively. However, in percentage terms, this is relatively low at (-4.44%) and (-5.06%).
- New entrants (and still current on the FAR) is at 299. For the previous period, it is 283. Not a large differential, indicating that the pace of new entrant growth has stabilised.
Key Adviser Movements This Week:
- Net change of advisers (-14)
- Current number of advisers at 15,595
- Net Change Calendar 2024 YTD (-21)
- Net Change Financial YTD +40
- 27 Licensee Owners had net gains of 33 advisers
- 33 Licensee Owners had net losses for (-49) advisers
- 1 new licensee and (-4) ceased
- 6 New entrants.
- Number of advisers active this week, appointed / resigned: 86.
Growth This Week – Licensee Owners
- A small licensee, Altitude Wealth Management owned by Amluta Pty Ltd, gained all three advisers from JGTSs Advice which effectively ceased, going down to zero advisers
- Another small licensee owner, Adrians Capital also picked up three advisers, all three moving away from Morgans
- WT Financial Group up by a net 2 advisers, picking up three advisers, all from different licensees and losing one adviser
- Lifespan followed WT Financial group by also hiring three advisers and losing one. All three advisers moving across from Affinia now owned by Count Ltd
- A tail of 23 licensee owners up by net 1 each including, Steinhardt Holdings (Infocus), Centrepoint Group and the one new licensee with an adviser who left FYG Planners.
Losses This Week – Licensee Owners
- Count Ltd were down by (-8), with losses at four licensees. Not: Affinia is now down to just 1 adviser, with most now authorised at the Count licensee
- Fortnum down by (-4), after hiring one and losing one at Fortnum Private, and losing four from Personal Financial Services licensee. Only one of the ceased is showing as appointed elsewhere.
- Morgans down (-3), as mentioned above, advisers moving to Adrians Capital
- The Trustees For Grasso Investments (JGTS Advice), dwon by (-3), also mentioned above
- Ashford Financial Planning, down to zero advisers after losing the remaining two advisers
- Fitzpatricks Group, down to 52 advisers after losing two advisers, with one of them joining Alliance Wealth owned by Centrepoint
- A tail of 27 license owners down by net (-1) each including, Findex Group, Ord Minnett and Sequoia Group.
To the cheers from ASIC, ISF’s, Govt’s & fools at choice etc Well done it’s going just as planned….
WOW THAT’S A SURPRISE 😂 Killing an indusrty 101 going to plan!
Not to worry, Jonesy and Albo have a plan to bring in ‘qualified advisers’, and bypass all of the current expensive running costs, educational requirements and red tape, and they offer advice for free. That’ll solve the adviser drain problem easy peasy.
Financial link and Crown are no loss
There would be another 40 or so more in those numbers but……..you know how important mental health is these days in our industry.
Good luck getting Jones or Albo to read the outstanding and descriptive Mental Health Survey by Philippa Hunt and Steve Prendeville in 2022, it uncovers where a lot of the significant problems are and reasons why advisers are leaving and not returning.
Some of us are a bit thick!
Some of us haven’t worked out that the Coalition government, by introducing FASEA (funded to the tune of $11m for the first three years by the banks) then LIF (principally designed so the banks could sell their unprofitable life insurance arms and dress them up for sale to overseas insurers by offering less distribution costs) was working assiduously to eliminating self-employed financial advisers, while paying lip service to being the only political party representing small business.
Add to that ASIC, who clearly would prefer to have a very small number of large licensees, so those licensees could be easily threatened with closure if breaches continued. Oh, and I forgot, it’s not helped that successive Ministers for Financial Services both worked for NAB before becoming politicians. It really was all very predictable
Now after a change of government, the agenda is the same, it’s just been driven by different people. In this case the industry funds, sick of watching FUM walk out the door as members reached retirement age and sought to plan post-retirement funding by, horrors of horrors, consulting qualified self-employed financial advisers.
The objective is the same from both Labor and Liberal – get rid of self-employed financial advisers and have them all employed by institutions. The recent increases to the the number of small AFSLs could be bothering the hell out of Labor-it’s not going to plan, but QAR will fix that!.
Is this capitulation?
I took the view that I wanted a retirement with both my mental and physical health in tact so that I could enjoy what I’d worked so hard for and delivcered for my own clients…It got to the point where my mental health wasn’t worth compromising.
It is really unfair and rubbish that we are perpetually treated as a play thing by people in Canberra.