This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows an decrease of (-12) Adviser Roles moving from a total of 19,380 to 19,368

The number of actual Advisers decreased by (-16) from 19,113 to 19,097

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

Key Movements This Week:

• 53 Appointments, (-65) Resignations - Net Change in roles of (-12). Note: 4 Advisers appointed at 2 licensees to cause the variance between role losses of (-12) and actual advisers of (-16)

• A net gain of 9 Provisional Advisers, with 11 appointed, and two resigned. One of the resignations was reappointed as an adviser (Provisional Advisers included in above figures). See more on Provisional Advisers below.

• 26 Licensee Owners (dashboard 1B) had net gains for 47 roles

• 37 Licensee Owners had net losses for (-59) roles.

Growth This Week
Heading the growth this week was Macquarie Group with 15, driven by adviser growth at Macquarie Bank increasing roles by 13. The numbers at Macquarie Bank were driven by some advisers who had joined the ASIC FAR pre 2018 while at Macquarie Group, later resigned off the FAR and now reappointed this July. Three of the appointments (2 new advisers and 1 existing) also have roles at Macquarie Equities.

Fortnum Private gained 3 advisers, all from the AMP Group, 2 from AMP Financial Planning and 1 from Hillross. A new licensee Morplan commenced with 3 advisers. Morplan moved away from Financial Services Partners of IOOF.

2 new licensees were formed, Morplan and Hackney Insurance +1, for a total of 4 roles.

Another long tail for growth with 20 licensee owners making a net gain of 1 adviser role each.

Losses This Week
AMP Group down (-11), with losses across AMP FP, Charter, Hillross and IPAC. Accounting firm Daniel Allison reduced their advisers in half, moving down from 12 to 6. Boston Reed and HESTA both down (-3). Three groups down by (-2), CBA, NAB and Australian Administration Services better known as Link. Another long tail of losses, with 30 licensee owners losing a net (-1) adviser each.

3 licensees closed for the loss of (-3) roles.

Year To Date Data
Year to date movement was little changed this week with Oreana still out in front at 20, Centrepoint at 16 and Count at 13. Fortnum gaining ground and up to plus 10.

IOOF grew by plus 2 this week and extended its position as the leading advice group with a total of 1,440 advisers, ahead of AMP Group at 1,343 and then a big gap to NTAA at 669.

NTAA did open a full service advice licensee, ‘Advice Assist’ earlier this month to run alongside SMSF Adviser Network which is restricted to SMSF advice. The licensee currently has 2 advisers.

Provisional Advisers and New Advisers - How Many Now And How Many Are Required
Some background - In most circumstances, to become a new financial adviser for retail advice, the adviser must be a ‘Provisional Adviser’ first and after completing exams and the professional year, the Provisional Adviser becomes an adviser. On the ASIC FAR, Provisional Advisers are not allocated a ‘Year’ for the year they commenced giving advice. That year is allocated once they become an adviser in their own right.

Looking at the chart below ‘Year Current Advisers Commenced’, (Dashboard 14 and simplified for this blog) we can see that the number of advisers who are Current and what year they commenced basically fell off a cliff post 2018. In fairness, this was driven by a surge in 2018 to take advantage of new FASEA rules. For example, we currently have 2,166 adviser roles on the FAR for advisers who commenced in 2018 and only 34 for 2021.

The Chart below from Dashboard 15 highlights the growth of Provisional Advisers since in 2019. It shows the additions per quarter and a running total now sitting at 111.

If we add the total new advisers and provisional advisers since 2019 we come to a total of 163 (111 + 7 + 11 +34). While this is encouraging, 163 in a little more than 2 1/2 years is not going stop the losses. For example, if we use a starting point of 19,000 advisers and have a natural attrition (retirements, resignations out of advice, etc) of only 4%, that would equate to a natural loss of 760 advisers in one year. To replace 760, we would need to hire much more than 760 to account for the ones who simply don’t make it as an adviser.

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