From good to gone, the numbers tell a new story

Looking at this year’sMoney ManagementTop 100 Dealer Groups table and scanning the numbers, it is apparent that the biggest jump in the number of planners in a dealer group was Professional Investment Services (PIS), which has put on an additional 701 planners in the past 12 months.

PIS managing director Robbie Bennetts says this number has for the first time included those advisers previously listed under the IFMA and Blueprint Portfolio Services arms, which in last year’s table accounted for 32 and 26 advisers respectively.

However, even when these two groups are combined with the 408 advisers listed under PIS last year, the group has managed to add nearly 650 new advisers to its totals for 2001.

Commenting on the numbers, Bennetts says the group has been adding more advisers from a range of backgrounds, however they have primarily been drawn from accountancy groups with the addition of a raft of new practices driving the numbers up.

Other star performers near the top end of the table also include Mawson, adding 70 planners for a total of 210, and Lynx moving from 23 to 170 planners, and new comer to the rankings, Fiducian with 150 planners.

Equally dramatic staff changes occurred at the Commonwealth Bank (CBA) with its Personal Bankers’ planner numbers dropping by 202 during the year, to 399.

At the same time, Commonwealth Investment Consultants jumped up by 84 planners to 305. However, the third arm of the bank’s advisory services, Commonwealth Financial Planning Premium Affluent, with 24 planners in 2000, was not present this year.

The reason for this is the Commonwealth had committed itself to streamlining its bank based advice channels as part of the integration of Colonial, which only had a two tier planning structure, as opposed to the CBA’s three tiers.

Nonetheless, this still represents a net loss in terms of planner numbers for the group, down by 118 on last year, excluding the Premium Affluent advisers.

The adviser numbers under Colonial that came across to the greater CBA group does not supply any more positive news either. Colonial Financial Services dropped from 343 to 278, a change of 65. It was the second year of falling numbers for the group, which recorded 400 planners on board in the 1999 rankings.

The presence of Colonial’s other planning arm, Colonial Financial Planning with its 126 planners in last year’s table, is unknown, as it does not appear in the table this year, much like the Premium Affluent planners.

Even the autonomous planning group within CBA, Financial Wisdom, also had planners moving on, shedding 57 since joining its new and larger parent.

The drop in numbers for CBA/Colonial is surprising because both Westpac and the National Australia Bank (NAB) increased their number of planners, as did ANZ.

Westpac did the best job of expanding its ranks, adding 149 over last year’s total of 554. That number represented three groups — Westpac Consumer Advisers, Westpac Business Advisers and Westpac Planners — this year covered by the single group, Westpac Financial Planning and Advice.

The ANZ Bank’s planning arm added 28 planners, while the NAB planning arm fared better, adding 43 over last year’s figures, for a total of 358.

However, NAB had mixed results in its other dealer groups which work through MLC. Of those listed in the table, only Garvan Financial Planning added any positive numbers, with the addition of 155 new planners to rest on 432.

MLC Private Clients, MLC Financial Planning and Apogee lost around 90 planners in total but some of these were redeployed across other advisory groups within the NAB/MLC structure.

Godfrey Pembroke resisted the trend and expanded by 79 advisers but these were a direct transfer of staff from Deustche Bank Financial Planning, which was purchased by MLC earlier this year.

It should be no surprise that the numbers of advisers working within bank structures has grown overall. They have been making a steady push into financial planning, with strong inflows achieved by Westpac and NAB, as their financial planning operations expand.

In fact, the big four banks, including their various subsidiaries, now employ 3,108 advisers, well above the largest dealer group, AMP Financial Planning, which lost 82 of it own planners, while stable mate Hillross lost 22 planners.

The data shows that the banks continue to get larger, far more so than the various consolidators that appear in the survey.

The consolidators, on average, have grown very little and do not appear in the top 20, despite various claims that they are buying high levels of planning groups.

High-profile consolidator Stockford puts in the best appearance at 39, up from its 47th position last year. It has a total of 70 planners, adding only 10 since last year and resting a long way behind the totals of the top 10 groups.

In the medium-sized financial planning groups, those in the middle of the Top 100, the number of planners increased by 75 to 434.

In this sector, AustAccount recorded the largest jump in planners with a rise of 22 additional advisers during the past 12 months. It also shares that area of the rankings with two notable debuts, Now Securities and Premium Accounting, with 64 and 50 planners respectively.

Partnership Planning also debuted on the rankings this year with 104 planners. As this was the combined product of Bleakleys and Adviser Investment Services, which had a combined total of 374 planners, clearly there has been some departures. One of these is Avenue Capital Management, which spun off from Partnership Planning and entered this year’s rankings with 36 planners on the books.

The small dealer group data is skewed because of the dramatic drop of planners employed at Wilson Dilworth. The number of planners at that group fell from 150 in 2000 to 12 this year, due to differing reporting standards.

Previously, Wilson Dilworth incorporated all proper authority holders, which included a considerable number of accountants who recommended the Wilson Dilworth master trust. This year the company has only reported salaried planners in the group.

However, some groups have slid out of the Top 100 rankings due to other reasons, most noticeably Chapel Road, Saxby Bridge and Harts Australasia. Chapel Road had 63 planners in 1999 and 39 in 2000, and is currently involved in legal action with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) after the dealer group appealed the withdrawal of its dealer licence.

Saxby Bridge’s numbers have also declined from 63 to 39 over the same period, while Harts actually increased its numbers from 80 to 102 from 1999 to 2000. However, at the time of printing, it was also in legal action with ASIC.

As for the remainder of the dealer groups that fill out the bottom section of the rankings, employment levels stayed about the same during the past 12 months, with only slight increases reported by those groups that supplied data.