Average adviser churn reaches 39%

The degree to which Australia’s largest financial planning licensees have been reshaping their businesses has been confirmed by new analysis which shows that amid the loss of scores of advisers, they have been strategically recruiting to their ranks.

The analysis, conducted by WealthData, confirms that just because AMP Limited and Insignia have been shedding adviser numbers over the past two years does not mean they have not been recruiting.

However, the ratio of adviser exits to new recruits at AMP and Insignia is around one to four.

A similar picture emerges for WT Financial Group but Centrepoint Alliance is the exception recruiting almost as many advisers as those it has lost over the period.

The analysis of the movement of advisers out of and into different licensees is important because adviser exits from the profession have stabilised over the past 10 months with churn between licensees becoming the more dominant factor.

The analysis comes on the back of WealthData’s recent findings regarding the number of advisers who had exited large licensees to find a new home within ‘micro-AFSLs’  of four or fewer advisers.

WealthData principal, Colin Williams said that where the large licensees were concerned, most firms had been hiring at a slower rate than average, while losing more advisers than average.

The WealthData analysis shows that average adviser turnover per licensee with more than 50 advisers has been around 39% over the past two years, although this has been influenced by some the reality that licensees that were focused on accounting had tended to skew the result. This is underscored by the fact that turnover for the National Tax and Accountants group was by far the largest at 109%.