This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows an increase of +9 Adviser Roles moving from 19,360 to 19,369

The number of actual Advisers decreased by +1 from 19,075 to 19,076

Click Here To Access The Detailed Adviser Dashboards

(See Dashboard 17 for more information to the variation between Adviser Roles and Actual Advisers)

Key Movements This Week:

• 39 Appointments and (-30) Resignations - Net Change in roles of +9*.

• 30 Licensee Owners had net gains for 36 roles

• 22 Licensee Owners had net losses for (-27) roles

• 4 Provisional Advisers appointed, 3 resigned with 2 being re-appointed as advisers.

*The main reason for the this week’s variance between adviser roles and actual advisers was due to 7 advisers being appointed a second time while at a current licensee. This occurred at Evans Dixon, Macquarie Group, Midsec Licensing and 'We Are Gen Y'. Dashboard 17 breaks the data down.

Growth This Week
A stable week of adviser movement. The growth in adviser roles was somewhat blurred by some groups appointing existing advisers into additional roles within the group. Excluding those, 4 groups did expand by 2 advisers, these being; Morgan Stanley with two new Provisional Advisers, Kaizen Wealth with both advisers from IPAC. Lifespan with 1 adviser each from TG Financial and Aware Super. Easton Group also gained 2 split between GPS, 1 adviser from Zenith Wealth and Merit gaining 1 from Spark Financial.

A long tail of growth this week with 24 licensee owners gaining a net 1 adviser each.

Only the one new licensee for 1 adviser commencing a business after leaving Financial Services Partners.

Losses This Week
AMP Group dominated the losses with (-6) spread across AMP Financial Planning at (-4) and Charter (-2). Thereafter, 21 licensee owners lost net (-1) each.

Only the one licensee closed (down to zero advisers) for (-1) advisers role.

Year To Date Data
With the quiet week, not much has changed YTD. We did expect a quiet period as we move through the year. It is worth noting the losses at IOOF have reduced considerably. YTD IOOF have lost (-376) roles but are +1 for this financial year.

Leading the losses financial year to date is AMP Group down (-40). AMP Financial Planning down (-16) and it’s position as being the single largest licensee is under threat at 670 with SMSF Advisers network just 1 behind at 669.

Centrepoint - Clearview Deal
This week, Centrepoint Alliance and Clearview announced a deal with Centrepoint buying Clearview’s licensees Clearview Financial and Matrix. Clearview were upfront stating that it is hard to make mid-tier licensees viable. Since Jan 1, 2020 the combined number of advisers at Clearview fell from 217 advisers to 179, a loss of (-38). However, they did gain the services of some 106 self-licensed advisers (as per ASX announcement) over the past 2 years.

Centrepoint have had the most growth of advisers YTD, at 22 for firms that have 50 or more advisers. They have been successful at providing services to self-licensed advisers, stated at 813 in their ASX announcement. The acquisition provides additional scale and are well positioned to acquire the additional services of self-licensed advisers, a sector the adviser market that has grown over recent times - See Aug 12 Blog Post that highlighted the growth of the self-licensed adviser.

Clearview were not on their own with losses and no doubt other licensees will be feeling the same pain. Earlier this year we saw a similar deal between Wealth Today and Sentry and it will be interesting to see how many additional licensees decide to sell or merge businesses over the coming months. With licensees running out of product related rebates as per Centrepoint which reported a reduction of $5.6 million in rebates as platform rebates ceased and grandfathered deals running off, the correct pricing of adviser services becomes vital. For many licensees the answer will be scaling up like Centrepoint and for others, it will be a matter of being very targeted in their service offering.

Two Months of Growth?
With a few days remaining in August, we look like completing the first two months of back to back growth since the heavy losses commenced in 2019 (See chart below - From Dashboard 7). Before we get ahead of ourselves, the previous two months of May and June saw some heavy losses and with FASEA Exam looming large, we can expect some further heavy losses as we close out the year and start 2022.

There Are Still Opportunities For Growth
We believe there are some 1,300 to 1,500 advisers who have passed the FASEA Exam but not ‘Current’ on the ASIC FAR. Therefore, any financial advice firms looking to grow could be in a strong position to hire qualified advisers. There is also an influx of Provisional Advisers, now at 124 (Dashboard 15) and a further 67 have been registered as a new adviser since jan 1, 2019 (Dashboard 15). A net total of 191 ‘new’ advisers with the vast majority coming on in 2021.

Have a great week - any questions, please call or email using the contact details