FAAA’s balance sheet reflects adviser numbers reality
Moribund financial adviser numbers are continuing to impact the bottom line for the Financial Advice Association of Australia (FAAA) and the numbers will not be helped by another expected end of year exodus.
The FAAA’s latest annual report has revealed the organisation’s challenges in maintaining services to members in the face of declining membership subscriptions and practice fees but association chief executive, Sarah Abood, points to strategies aimed at rebuilding numbers.
Speaking to Financial Newswire, Abood acknowledged the challenges facing her organisation, not least the expectation of a further 1000 advisers exiting the profession at the end of the calendar year due to the education requirements and personal career decisions.
She said that while some assessments pointed to a higher number of exits, the FAAA’s best guess based on various intention surveys suggested around 1,000 advisers.
Abood agreed that the current situation demanded the FAAA adopted new strategies and included amongst those was the continuing efforts around the Advice Academy aimed at attracting professional year candidates.
As well, she noted another round of advertising armed at career changes, whilst noting bringing a “Know Your Client” anti-money laundering tool to market in associated with Korda Mentha.
The FAAA’s annual report has painted a picture of an organisation with solid reserves but with diminishing inflows reflecting the declining number of financial advisers in Australia.
It showed that total revenue for the most recent (2025) financial year was down just over $3.1 million with membership subscripts down to the tune of $336,000 to $6.216 million, with practice fees down $22,000.
However, on the positive side, the association did better out of its conferences and seminars, booking $3.121 million and better again with respect to its Certified Financial Planner designation program which was up $70,000 over the prior corresponding period to $260,000.
The annual report also noted that the FAAA’s merger with the Association of Financial Advisers had generated a “merger gain” of $2.985 million.
Abood acknowledged that the key to the FAAA’s future lies in growing the profession and the proportion of advisers who choose to be members of an association.
Anyone entering this profession to do the Professional Year would clearly lack the intelligence to gauge the probable risk/return of doing so going forward.
As an adviser of over 25 years, I would urge ANYONE against taking that course of action.
This profession is an abysmal mess (very easy to fix), and has been for any number of years.
FAAA only has about half of the practising adviser population as members. (They also have lots of miscellaneous hangers on who are members, which makes it look like they are more representative of advisers than they actually are.)
FAAA needs to totally focus on the needs of practising advisers. They need to ditch all the hangers on and “special programs”. They need to ditch the “grandfathered” CFPs which totally undermine the value of the CFP designation. They need to stop accepting bulk membership payments from vertically integrated licensees, which is essentially product company membership by stealth. They need to stop all the well rehearsed weasel excuses, and become more open and honest.
The key to FAAAs growth, relevance, and effectiveness is to do some serious soul searching about why half the practising adviser population choose NOT to be members of FAAA.
“They need to ditch the “grandfathered” CFPs which totally undermine the value of the CFP designation.”
I said this years ago and indicated that stating all CFP’s were of the same high standard (to the public), was in breach of their own charter.
Fell on deaf ears – It won’t happen.
When the experience exemption was proposed, FAAA lobbied very hard for a 10 year sunset clause. Which was actually quite a reasonable position to take. But it exposed the ridiculous double standards and vested interests within FAAA leadership, who have consistently dug their heels in and come up with all sorts of weasly excuses not to sunset grandfathered CFPs.
This is part of why FAAA has a credibility problem, which leads to so much of FAAA’s good quality lobbying being ignored.
Maybe if they showed they actually care & supported their existing members better. I reported last year case of being bullied by product provider that caused client angst and me professional stress and a whole load of non-productive time wasting. They sat on it for 2 – 3 months and only responded with sorry (not really sorry) as they didn’t intend to do anything about it – Thanks for nothing
FAAA have become irrelevant and is a pointless / directionless organisation