At the end of the first quarter of 2021, gains in adviser roles year-to-date were still much smaller than the losses at the licensee level, but a number of licensees that were closing down were more often associated with accounting firms, with financial advice being just a small part of their business, according to analysis by HFS Consulting.
But for more experienced financial advisers the trend continued and they were more often starting new licensees.
When it came to numbers, the total loss of adviser roles as of last week stood at 312, with the biggest losses at a licensee level being attributed to AMP Financial Planning at (-59) followed by GWM Adviser Services (MLC) at (-42) and Synchron at (-33)
At a group level, MLC was down (-88), AMP at (-77) and IOOF at (-76).
Net change advisers roles (licence owners > 50 current advisers)
Source: HFS Consulting
Colin Williams, director at HFS, told Money Management that the losses at IOOF and MLC would be very worrying across the board as they were building a momentum of their own which would be hard to stop in the short term.
“Another issue will be the number of advisers who may drop out due to not completing the FASEA exam,” he said.
“The latest figures out of FASEA are not encouraging and those losses could be very high for a lot of licensees including those owned IOOF and MLC.”
As far as the last week was concerned, 84 adviser roles were appointed, including five ‘new’ as provisional advisers. Therefore, 79 appointments could be seen as experienced advisers switching licensees.
At the same time, 188 adviser roles resigned to give the net total of (-104) adviser roles.
Last week also saw 56 licensees having reported net adviser losses, with AMP Financial Planning being down (-22), Bridges Financial Services at (-17) and Link Advice who provided advisers to super funds were down 13.
Wealthsure, who are part of Sentry Group, was down (-11) and thereafter a long tail licensees with losses.
A total of four licensees were closed (now with zero advisers) who accounted for a total of (-11) roles.
