CountPlus eyeing off another 156 advisers
CountPlus has revealed the degree to which there has been no cooling off in the competition between financial planning licensees to recruit advisers and generally gain scale.
In a market update to the Australian Securities Exchange, CountPlus revealed that it had already recruited 16 new advisers so far this financial year, with 24 further advisers being subjected to due diligence with 156 advisers in prospect.
At the same time the company, which is the parent of Count Financial, confirmed the degree to which it is seeking to maintain mergers and acquisitions momentum, describing 12 “active” opportunity, 24 early-stage mergers and acquisitions discussions and 80 leads.
The M&A and adviser recruitment activity comes against the background of the company reporting a 90% increase in net profit after tax to $7.2 million with aggregated revenue up 24% to $221 million.
Importantly, the substantial indemnity provided by the Commonwealth Bank when CountPlus acquired Count Financial in 2019 continues to be fundamental with the update to the ASX revealing that the bank continued to meet its client remediation obligations.
“CBA anticipates being able to substantially meet its commitment to finalise sending remediation outcome letters to customers by the end of 2022,” the CountPlus update said. “As at 12 October 2022, approximately 51,000 remediation outcome letters had been sent with approximately $111 million offered or paid through the program.”
“Based on the advanced state of the remediation program, CountPlus expects CBA will shortly be in a position to confirm the average refund rate.”
“In the event that the actual average refund rate is found to be higher than the assumed refund rate, and where that meant customer payments would exceed the remaining headroom in the $300 million indemnity, consistent with past practice a variation to the indemnity deed would be required,” it said.
Thats $7.2m (more if you include operating costs) that could go back to advisers and their clients in the form of lower fees if licensees didn’t exist. When will adviser move to self licensing?