Time to create adviser-centric AFSL models

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor and Publisher

27 January 2026

Financial planning licensees need to update their models and become more adviser-centric if they want to retain advisers considering the self-licensing option, according to Australian Mortgage and Financial Advisers (AMAFA) managing director, Keith Marshall.

Referencing CoreData research estimating that the true cost of self-licensing for solo advice practices can exceed $300,000 a year, Marshall said the advice industry needs to confront the uncomfortable reality that some advisers are in outdated licensee models.

He said the go-it-alone sentiment is increasingly shaping how advisers think about self-licensing, not always as a genuine aspiration, but as a way to exit arrangements that no longer feel fit for purpose.

“We believe many advisers are not leaving their licensee to pursue their own AFSL because they reject oversight, but because the value equation no longer stacks up,” Marshall said.

“They talk about things like high costs without corresponding high service, rigid systems with limited flexibility, slow decision-making, one-size-fits-all approaches to compliance, and attitudes that continue to treat them as distribution channels rather than partners.”

Marshall said that while it is understandable that advisers feel constrained by outdated models, it is important not to romanticise the idea of self-licensing.

Self-licensing carries significant regulatory responsibility and recent research suggests it can be expensive.

“CoreData Research has estimated that the true cost of self-licensing for solo advice practices can exceed $300,000 a year in some cases, when costs and lost client time are taken into account,” he says.

“The research also suggests some advisers may be underestimating the price of freeing themselves from their licensee, not only in tangible terms, such as fees, professional indemnity insurance and compliance support, but also in opportunity cost, and the mental load of being a responsible manager as well as an adviser, entrepreneur and business owner.”

Marshall said  ‘freedom’ does not have to mean carrying every burden personally. It can be about building a practice that is sustainable, scalable, profitable and compliant, without operational overload.

“For many advisers, the smartest definition of freedom is not becoming a responsible manager themselves, spending hours each week on governance, coordinating suppliers and hoping the framework holds under pressure,” he says. “It’s choosing a licensee that helps them run their businesses their own way – and spend the highest possible proportion of their week on client-facing work, without putting their licence and livelihood at risk.”

In practice, Marshall said this means licensees need to deliver practical, adviser-led support, including flexible software choice, paraplanning support that restores adviser capacity, administrative assistance that removes bottlenecks, and genuine partnership and community that helps reduce stress and isolation.

“If the licensee model is to survive, adviser-centricity must be operational, not just aspirational,” he said. “Freedom shouldn’t be about feeling like self-licensing is the only option. It should be about enabling advisers to run compliant businesses the way they want to run them.”