Number of Advisers decreased by (-603) from 18,273 to 17,670

Click Here To Access The Detailed Adviser Dashboards

New Dashboards
We will no longer be providing detailed information of small licensees every week for free on the dashboards. We have all the details and happy to share privately.

Key Movements:

• Net Change of advisers (-603) for this reporting period

• Net change for the month of December, 2021 (-806)

• Net Change for the year of 2021 (-2,930)

Note: On dashboards 1A (licensees) and 1B (licensee Owners), you can ‘hover’ your cursor over each ‘bar’ in the charts and see more details.

Summary
As the data slowly comes in, the numbers clearly show that 2021 has been a very difficult one for advice firms with very few bright spots. We are expecting additional losses for 2021 as the reporting rolls in post the holiday period. We have an expectation that the number of advisers will reduce to the approx 17,200 during January and thereafter to between 15,000 and 16,000 as the year rolls out.

Highlights (Jan 1, 2021 to Jan 13, 2022)
See Dashboards 2 - Among the larger licensee owners, (50 or more current advisers), AIA Company by default of the deal with CBA is at +57. Oreana backed in another good year with +37, taking them to a total of 96 advisers. Centrepoint showed that a large group can grow with net growth of 21. They did take on Clearview licensees and this growth is net of losses through the year at Clearview. Count also did well with growth of 12 advisers.

Dashboard 3 - See image below - This highlights different sectors of the market. Overall the losses are at (-14.43%). Hardest hit in percentage terms was the Accounting - Limited Advice (mostly advice limited to SMSF) is down by (-36.31%) and we expect this to deteriorate further as more reporting comes in over the next couple of weeks. This sector also saw 121 licensees close and none commenced.

Holding up the best with losses of (-5.95%) is the Accounting - Financial Planning (holistic advice, mostly owned by accounting groups). It is a relatively small sector of the market with less than 1,000 advisers. This sector also had growth in the number of licensees with 15 commencing and 9 closing.

The Investment Advice sector (mostly focused on portfolio advice often using direct investments) held up very well through to December, but got hit hard in the last few weeks due to FASEA. Overall it is down (-297) advisers or (-8.69%). However, since December 1, it lost (-194) or 2/3rds of their losses in one month.

The Financial Planning and the largest sector, suffered a loss of (-1,652) advisers or (-12.91%). This sector is in some ways a story of ‘large versus small’. The only real growth is the number of new licensees with 131 licensees opening and 47 closing - virtually all new licensees being small licensees (less than 20 advisers). While some of the large licensee owners who operate in this sector suffered heavy losses. For example, dashboard 4 shows Insignia Group (IOOF) down (-31.35%) and AMP group down (-26,21%). Their losses are much greater than the total loss of (-12.91%) for the sector and their combined loss of 964 advisers, represents more than half the losses across the sector.

Next week we will revert back to regular weekly reporting.