Good advisers have whip hand over scale-focused licensees

Competition to attract good financial advisers has rarely been fiercer between financial planning licensees, but the level of churn across the profession has been minimal.

Amid the flurry of mergers and acquisitions announcements impacting Australian Unity, Diverger and Millennium3 there has been an expectation that some advisers might vote with their feet by moving to different licensees but the data covering recent months suggests the reality will be otherwise.

According to WealthData principal, Colin Williams the significant movement in 2023 has not involved adviser movement between licensees but, rather, the registration of new licensees as advisers impacted by mergers and acquisitions have chosen to become self-licensed.

Williams pointed out that, thus far, 104 new licensees had been registered this year, with the bulk appearing to be as a result of self-licensing.

When Financial Newswire contacted major licensee principals this week they all pointed to the dynamic created by the announcements over the past four weeks around Count Financial’s acquisition of Diverger, the acquisition transaction around Australian Unity involving Fortnum and AZ-NGA, WT Financial’s acquisition of Millennium3 and the earlier acquisition of TAL’s Affinia by Count Limited.

Then, too, there have been the new stand-alone financial advice structures put in place at Insignia and AMP Limited.

Financial Newswire is aware of licensees who have been interrogating the Financial Adviser Register in a bid to identify which advisers have been working under the licenses currently the subject of acquisition with the likelihood of offers being made.

But the same licensee principals who talked about the intense competition to attract good financial advisers also dismissed the need for retention payments or other forms of inducement to their existing financial advisers.

WealthData’s Williams said that the proliferation of self-licensing or “micro-licensees” had been one of the most significant developments in Australian financial planning over the past 18 months.