Positive early signs for FAAA member numbers
The newly-created Financial Advice Association of Australia (FAAA) is facing its month of truth as members of the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) sign up to the new, merged body while members of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) decide whether to renew.
And, according to AFA chief executive, Phil Anderson, the signs are positive that the new organisation will meet expectations in terms of ultimate member numbers.
According to the FPA’s most recent annual report, the organisation had 10,954 members while the AFA had 3,292 members on 30 June, last year, while acknowledging that member numbers had continued to decline into the current financial year.
That means that the combined number of members of both organisations at 30 June, last year, was 14,246 but that does not take account of the fact that there were further exits from the Financial Adviser Register (FAR).
The potential final membership of the new FAAA needs to be weighed against the reality that, according to the latest analysis from WealthData, the total number of advisers on the FAR now stands at around 10,500.
Anderson said that members of the AFA had until 26 June to register as members of the FAAA and that there had been a strong initial response which was consistent with what had been hoped for.
He said that he expected that some of the initial positive response had been motivated by the tax deductability of fees.
“We’re pleased with what we are seeing,” Anderson said.
He noted that FPA members were faced with a different situation and that they had until 30 June to renew their membership.
The opening of membership for the FAAA follows on from the national combined roadshow conducted by Anderson and FAAA chief executive, Sarah Abood.
The new FAAA will be considered to have done well if its membership exceeds 12,000.
Don’t get too excited. This is the last chance members like myself are giving both organisations to get it right this time and not kick us to the curb as has been done for the last 5 years, if not longer. Stand up for advisers or openly admit you are focussing on the providers and we will vote with our feet in 12 months. There are a lot of angry people out there.
Many members of FPA will not be making any decision to renew whatsoever. Their product company employers or licensees will be making that decision for them, and paying their fees in bulk at a discounted rate.
FPA’s refrain that “we aren’t subject to any product company influence because we don’t have product company members” is a disingenuous smokescreen. Product company influence is still very much a factor, via product company control and funding of employee/AR memberships.
For FAAA to move closer to becoming a genuine professional association they must only accept individual payments from individual members at the standard rate, even if this means losing some members.
I’ve always wondered how a professional membership organisation can offer ‘bulk discounts’ to the large dealer groups. A few years ago I went self licenced, and was told the other rate was for dealer groups, and said I am a dealer, then go no reply…
I wont be renewing, they simply don’t represent advisers best interests
Many like us renew simply because the CFP designation is dependant upon it, a Machiavellian move by an earlier shrewd FPA board of yore.
What do we actually get directly as members though?
Forget the esoteric head office nonsense of ‘advocating on advisers behalf’, we know that has been completely ineffectual.
Regional members get little by way of services or events, and the rare one or two provided, they charge outrageous fees to attend.
The last national roadshow on the FAAA merger, where they expected members to pay an exorbitant amount just to sit and hear them bang on about how wonderful they are and will be, was appalling and disgraceful.
If the CFP “designation” is contingent on your membership of the FPA then perhaps it shows its true value. Maybe it’s time you let it go and we as an industry can consign that cereal box “designation” to the rubbish bin of history where it belongs.
Agreed. I’ve done the CFP course twice & dropped the designation twice because there’s really no value in it. If you try to re-engage it’s all about how much the FPA/FAAA can screw out of you to be permitted to use the hollowed designation. I got nothing from the FPA for the tens of thousands of membership dollars I paid over the years other than the right to put three letters behind my name. Completely worthless post FASEA
No renewals forthcoming from this long forgotten Regional Adviser.Bye Bye.
We all know politicians distort statistics. But there is something rotten in the state of Denmark when the FAR records 10,500 advisers in practice, and the FAAA claim is that they have 14,246 adviser members. Seems like there’s 500 flunkies on the FAAA list who wouldn’t know a client if they met one.
Time for some truth telling FAAA. You sure as hell don’t have a “Voice”.
Anyone know a fact checker?
No one in our practice is renewing their AFA/FPA memberships. We need every cent to fund the ASIC levy/tax which the AFA/FPA failed in getting changed. This was the last straw, why should we keep paying a body that fails in everyway to reflect the needs and interests of it’s members?
Dear Researcher, just for the benefit of your memory, it was the FPA and the AFA who argued in 2020 and 2021 for a reduction in the ASIC Funding Levy for financial advisers that resulted in the former Government reducing the levy for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 years to the 2018/19 level. This created significant savings for the adviser population ($25m per year). That advocacy also resulted in Treasury undertaking a review of the ASIC Funding Levy, and they listened to the objections from the associations (although the outcome has not been released). That two year freeze period has now expired and we have a new Government. We are likely to see a big increase for the 2022/23 year, and we are all going to need to loudly call for this to be reduced. Merit where merit is due!
Thank you “Fact Check” for pointing out that FPA/AFA lobbying has achieved little more than a short term pause in one of the huge number of financial and administrative regulatory imposts that unfairly make life hell for the honest majority of advisers.
Weighing up total outcomes vs issues across the board, the lobbying efforts of FPA and AFA couldn’t be seen as anything other than a dismal failure. I don’t actually think this has anything to do with the amount of effort put in or the competence of the people involved. It has much more to do with a lack of FPA/AFA credibility. Both organisations have been heavily influenced by product companies in the past, and unfortunately FAAA remains so. When it comes to education issues in particular, the FPA’s ongoing grandfathered CFP rort completely undermines the credibility of anything they say.
Regulators and politicians simply do not take FPA/AFA seriously, regardless of how many meetings they attend or submissions they put forward or polite acknowledgements they receive. Urgent internal reform of FAAA is necessary before they have any hope of influencing external regulatory reform.
The big failure on the ASIC levy from FPA/AFA is that they failed to gain any concessions that a reducing number of advisers on the FAR should have to pay for the cost of the ASIC litigation against bad advice provided by the banks in the two decades leading up to the Hayne Royal commission.
They also failed apparently to convince government, not just ASIC, that the fines and costs accumulated with successful legal actions against failed bank advice should be kept in a pool to fund further action, and not just parcelled of to Consolidated Revenue. There is something grossly unfair about 15,000 advisers (depends on who you believe, but it is reducing rapidly) having to fund actions against advisers who are no longer in the industry. But I guess the banks pay all those political contributions for some purpose, and one of them is not to have to fund legal actions against their own former advisers.
And apparently there was no consideration by the FPA/AFA mob that advisers in small businesses or specialist businesses should have to pay the same ASIC levy rate for advisers who worked for say, AMP. Perhaps the levy should be funded on a calculation involving FUM and the size of a risk business book.
And I personally keep coming back to the same old problem as outlined by “Anon” in the reply to “Fact Check” – ” Both organisations have been heavily influenced by product companies in the past, and unfortunately FAAA remains so”.
And can anyone confirm the rumour that in the recent FPA vote to amalgamate with the AFA, only those members of the FPA who held the CHP qualification were able to vote on the merger. Seems a little deceptive to me, if true.
No wonder the government seems to give them little credence when a good proportion of the former FPA membership is “captured” because they wish to retain their CHP qualifications, which is not possible without retaining membership. In another world that sounds like “third line forcing” as found in the Trade Practices Act. Who knows?
That rumour about FPA voting eligibility not true Old Risky. CFP, AFP, and Provisional Adviser members were all eligible to vote.
However of the CFPs it was those who held the “designation”, not the “qualification”. Grandfathered CFP members can hold the designation without having completed the CFP qualification. All other members must complete a degree and the CFP qualification (including an exam about 10 times harder than the FASEA exam) to hold the CFP designation.