Financial Adviser Movement, Feb 18, 2021

Details to the data are available via the link below this post

This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows a reduction of (-23) Adviser Roles from 20,929 to 20,906. The number of actual Advisers reduced by (-21) falling from 20,590 to 20,569. More information regarding the variance between Adviser Roles and actual Advisers see Dashboard 12. Note: Currently there are 15 Advisers with 3 Roles and 307 Advisers with 2 Roles.

For the week there were 51 Appointments, 48 being Advisers switching between licensees and 3 ‘new’ Provisional Advisers. 74 Adviser Roles were ceased (48 Switched, 26 no longer current on the FAR) to give the net loss of (-23).

Gains For The Week
Two licensees had net gains of 3 Advisers each, these being a new licensee, Fortunae PTY Ltd trading as Breakfree Financial Management in Bathurst NSW. All advisers are Ex Lonsdale. Alliance Wealth, part of listed firm Centrepoint Alliance also a net gain of 3 Advisers, 2 from GWM (MLC) and 1 from Australian Unity.

Five other licensees gained 2 Advisers roles each including Infocus who transitioned two Advisers from GWM in WA.

Two new licensees were formed and one recommenced with Advisers. Total Advisers for the 3 licensees was 6.

Losses For The Week
Aware Super had a net loss of (-5) Adviser roles, followed by GWM with (-4) and Lonsdale also (-4). Bedford CA Capital, primarily an accounting firm, effectively closed their licence with all 3 Advisers now ‘Ceased’. However, all 3 remain at Bedford in their capacity as accountants. As mentioned in previous posts, we expect to see more of this through 2021, as many firms who don’t specialise in financial advice decide to exit the burden of holding an AFSL.

Bedford was the only licence to close for the week for the loss of 3 Advisers.

Key Trends
While the losses have slowed since the first half of 2020, we have still seen a net loss of (-73) Adviser Roles YTD (2021) . The number of new ‘Provisional Adviser’ roles is still low with 17 appointed YTD (See dashboard 11 B). This indicates that some 90 Advisers have exited. To put this into perspective, a licensee with 90 Advisers would be the 48th largest in the country.

A lot of people are watching the numbers at IOOF and MLC. Again this week we saw reductions for both groups with licensees Lonsdale, GWM and Bridges recording losses. Since the IOOF proposed purchase of MLC on Aug 31, 2020, the combined IOOF /MLC group have lost 252 Advisers. This is near the total of AMP Group who have lost 261 Advisers over the same period of time (Dashboard 4 for detailed view or Dashboard 3 for summary).

All the details from above along with a whole lot more can be found on the Adviser Movement Dashboards via the below.