This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows a reduction of (-25) Adviser Roles from 20,902 to 20,877. The number of actual Advisers dropped by (-33) from 20,569 to 20,536. For more information regarding the variance between Adviser Roles and actual Advisers see Dashboard 17.

Note: Currently there are 16 (up 1 from last week) Advisers with 3 Roles and 309 (up 6 from last week) Advisers with 2 Roles.

For the week there were 74 Adviser roles appointed (68 switches) and 99 Adviser roles ceased to give the net total of (-25) roles. The reporting this week masked a true story of (-33) actual Adviser losses. This is due Apogee appointing the same Adviser 3 times which seems to be an error. BDO Appointed 3 Advisers, but two of these still have roles at Godfrey Pembroke and Evans and Partners appointed 3 Advisers who also have roles at Dixons, a related business.

It was a big week for Provisional Advisers with 6 appointments, I believe a record for one week. As 6 joined the ASIC register, it does mean that (-39) Advisers have ceased.

Gains For The Week
37 licensees made net Adviser role gains for the week. Wealth Trail (trading as Freedom Finance Australia) with 7 taking their net gain to 16 for the year and 30 since July 1, 2020. The Adviser gains flow mostly from Financial Services Partners (FSP) - (See Dashboard 5 for details).

Five licensees gained 3 roles including Fortnum Advice who got their Advisers from previously self-licensed 3CSG. As mentioned earlier, BDO Private Wealth gained 3 roles and Interprac also with 3 roles from different sources.

Only one new licensee this week - Iadvice Technology with 1 Adviser from Synchronised Business Systems (Synchron).

Losses For The Week
Synchron led the losses with (-11) roles and only 2 have been appointed elsewhere to date. FSP lost (-7) advisers to Wealth Trail as mentioned earlier. GWM (MLC) losing (-6) roles and only 2 have been appointed elsewhere.

In total 46 licensees had a net loss of Adviser roles for the week. Three licensees effectively closed for a total of (-7) Adviser roles.

Key Trends
It was good to see six Provisional Adviser Roles appointed for the week and the last two quarters have easily been the best for Provisional Adviser Appointments (see Dashboard 15). As Provisional Advisers complete their professional year and required qualifications, they are registered simply as Advisers and given an Adviser Commencement Date (Year only) of being an Adviser. For the 2021 Adviser Commencement Date there are 11 Advisers current Advisers, 1 more than for whole of 2020 which was at 10 and only 7 for 2019. This is a far cry from 2018 whereby 2,291 current Advisers commenced and in 2016 when 1,727 commenced (see Dashboard 14).

Weekly Adviser Movement Dashboards - New Version and New Features.

The dashboards have been given a refresh. They will now appear larger and more responsive on the desktop screen and easier to view on a mobile - tip, view in landscape. To access a Dashboard, you will need to click each tab at the top. A shortcut option is to click the ‘down arrow’ located at the far top left hand corner. Another tip is to click the ‘full screen’ icon located at the bottom right hand side of the frame. This will expand the dashboards and centrally locate them on your screen.

Two New Dashboards for Tracking Adviser Movement Between Licensees
Dashboard 5 ‘Appointments - Switched In’. By clicking the selected licensee, a chart will appear highlighting where the Advisers resigned from over the same time period. For example, clicking on GWM Adviser Services highlights that the vast majority of Advisers appointed since 30/08/2020 came via National Australia Bank. For Synchronised Business Systems, AMP Financial Planning (AMP FP) has been a good source of new Advisers.

Dashboard 6 ‘Resignations - Switched Out’ - This Dashboard is the opposite of Dashboard 5. By highlighting the licensee, it will show where Advisers who had resigned are now ‘Current’.

Please read the notes for both Dashboards provides some tips for use and why the numbers may not always add up as expected.

If you have any questions or requests for more detailed analysis, please call or email.

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