This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows a reduction of (-38) Adviser Roles from 20,877 to 20,839. The number of actual Advisers dropped by (-37) from 20,536 to 20,499. For more information regarding the variance between Adviser Roles and actual Advisers see Dashboard 17.

For the week, 50 Adviser roles were appointed (48 switches and 2 new Provisional Advisers) and 88 Adviser roles ceased to give the net total of (-38) roles.

Gains For The Week
27 licensees made net Adviser role gains for the week. KYCU Financial Planning, trading as Rate One Financial Services commenced their own AFSL with all 5 Advisers moving across from Synchron.

Three licensees, Count, Bombora and Alliance Wealth all gained 3 Advisers each. A busy week at Count as they 'appointed’ 6 Advisers and lost 3. Most of the Adviser gains came via Godfrey Pembroke with the practice Venture Financial Advisers switching across to Count.

Bombora got all 3 Advisers from GWM (MLC) and Alliance Wealth gained their 3 Advisers from Infocus.

Three new licensees commenced for a total of 8 Adviser Roles.

Losses For The Week
45 licensees had net Adviser losses for the week. RV Wealth, controlled by Fitzpatricks Private Wealth had the largest loss with (-8), none are currently showing as being appointed elsewhere. Godfrey Pembroke and GWM both lost (-6) Advisers each.

Five licensees effectively closed for a total of (-8) Adviser roles.

Pass the exam but Fail to report - to ASIC

Dashboard 16 - Qualifications by Licensee has been updated. There are now two charts, one showing the percentage of Advisers who have at least 1 FASEA approved qualification and the other is an indication to the percentage of Advisers who have a degree qualification (not necessarily approved by FASEA). Only licensees with 20 or more Advisers shown.

The most noticeable aspect of the FASEA Qualifications chart is that only a small number of Advisers / Licensees have reported their FASEA qualifications to ASIC. In total we can only find *120 Advisers (see note below) who have opted to disclose (via licensee) of passing the FASEA Exam on the FAR and a total of 3,361 Advisers have one or more FASEA approved qualification. FASEA through a media release on Feb 19, 2021 state that 11,241 Advisers have passed the FASEA Exam.

The second table ‘Degree Qualifications’, shows that approximately 56% of Advisers per licensee have a degree qualification of some description. As mentioned earlier, it is an indication. It is based on a search of Adviser qualifications that indicates that an Adviser has a degree.

Given the media post Royal Commission and currently the coverage of Melissa Caddick as to whether she should be called an ex Financial Adviser, one would think more than ever that it is vital for all Advisers and Licensees ensure that Adviser qualifications are current on the ASIC FAR. The ASIC Money Smart Website is probably the most popular used by the public to check out a prospective Adviser. The details at Money Smart for each Adviser is sourced from the ASIC FAR register.

Putting the tables together did highlight some issues. For example, there is no formal / recommended format for detailing qualifications. Secondly, typos or simply not spelling qualifications correctly can be an issue. For example, ‘Bachelor’ degree is often spelled as ‘Batchelor’ - No rose for that error!

If you believe the qualification results are not represented correctly for your licensee, please call or email to discuss.

*Since posting March 11, 2021 - there has been some feedback of confusion as to how the FASEA Exam should be posted to ASIC and this may reflect the low numbers in the data.