Weekly Financial Adviser Movement To June 10, 2021

This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows a decrease of (-57) Adviser Roles moving from a total of 20,199 to 20,142

The number of actual Advisers dropped by (-54) from 19,850 to 19,796

Click Here To Access The Detailed Adviser Dashboards

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

Key movement stats for the week
After last week’s seismic shift in reporting due to IOOF swallowing up MLC, we return to more stable numbers. Followers of the blog will recall that we identified many ex MLC staff not registering as current on the FAR. This week most have resurfaced at IOOF owned Actuate Alliance Services which gained 27 Advisers, all from MLC. The Advisers don’t typically provide traditional face to face advice, but need to be authorised to provide their services.

On the negative side, Aware Super that was formed when State Super NSW and its equivalent in VIC joined forces, losing a net (-23) roles. This had been signalled in the media a few weeks ago.

A total of 74 Appointments for the week, 4 being Provisional Advisers, indicating that 70 Advisers effectively switched licensees. 131 Resignations giving the net change of (-57). Excluding the Provisional Advisers, 61 Adviser roles dropped off the ASIC FAR this week.

Gains For The Week
Looking only at the Licensee Owners page (Dashboard 1B), 20 Owners made net gains with IOOF heading the list with 23. ‘Shichao’ (Cognitive Financial Partners) appear as new with 4. However, this due to a change in ownership. Oreana continue their growth with 3 Advisers transferring from Grant Thornton. 6 Owners came in with net growth of 2, including Count, followed by 11 Owners with a net growth of 1 each including Steinhardt Holdings who own Infocus.

Only the one ‘new’ licensee owner for this week - Pinnacle with 2 Advisers, one each from Bridges and Alliance Wealth.

Losses For The Week
Losses this week are dominated by FSSP (Aware Super) down a net (-23) for the week and (-44) YTD. AMP Group down (-10) and another Super Fund based Adviser group, Togethr losing (-6).

In total 48 licensee owners lost net Adviser roles of 110.

8 Licensees effectively closed (down to zero Adviser roles) for a total of (-8) roles. 7 of these were Accounting based licensees operating on a limited advice AFSL. YTD 63 Accounting based licensees have closed - So who’s providing advice to their clients? Must be a big opportunity for Advisers. We can help with details of each licensee that has closed.

YTD Movement
With the dust settling at IOOF as Advisers get assigned to licensees, they have extended their lead over AMP Group in terms of size. IOOF now have a total of 1,493 roles versus AMP Group at 1,414. A net gain of 33 over the week.

As for net growth of Adviser roles, Oreana extend their lead over Count with a net growth of 21 and Count at 17. Centrepoint Group at 12 and Fortnum at 11.

Interesting Stats For The Week
Year to date, 1,229 Adviser have ‘resigned’ (ceased at a licensee) and currently not listed as current on the FAR. Out of that total, 266 are ‘known’ to have passed their FASEA Exam. For example, at least 14 of the Advisers let go at Aware Super had passed the FASEA Exam. The total number is probably closer to 312 allowing for a factor to gross up the amount for those who have passed but not disclosed the result publicly.

Note: In total we know of 744 Advisers who have passed the FASEA Exam but are not Current on the ASIC FAR - When rounded up to account for those that have passed but not publicly disclosed the their result, the number is just over 1,000