Is it too expensive to maintain planners on register?
ANZ Banking Group, which accounted for this week’s biggest loss of 20 adviser roles, has explained the roles which were formally taken off the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC’s) Financial Advisers Register (FAR) were mostly supportive roles, such as paraplanning, and the staff will remain at ANZ.
According to HFS Consulting’s director Colin Williams, such movements might herald a new trend as maintaining the required training and skills to be classed as financial advisers would mean higher costs for organisations and become risk prohibitive.
“I am confident we will see a lot more of this as the year progresses as it is getting too expensive and risky to keep staff registered as financial advisers. I expect to see more support staff and other roles such as accountants who occasionally provide advice to be removed from the register,” he said.
This week GWM Adviser Services continued to lose adviser roles as it accounted for the second biggest drops in adviser number, with six more roles gone, on top of 12 roles which were removed from the register last week, according to HFS Consulting’s analysis.
Also, one of the groups owned by Easton Investments, The SMSF Expert, posted this week a loss of three adviser roles while four other licensees (Affinia Financial Advisers, Axies Pty, Charter Financial Planning and Commonwealth Financial Planning) all lost two advisers.
Source: IFS Consulting
According to Williams, in general adviser losses definitely slowed over recent months and between the start of January, 2020 until today there was a net loss of -2,950 advisers of which more than 2,200 happened in the first half of 2020.
In total, this week saw 41 Advisers appointed to 35 licensees, 39 being advisers who switched from another licensee and two being ‘new’ provisional advisers.
At the same time, 67 Advisers resigned from 33 licensees, leaving the net (-26) reduction in adviser numbers.
AUTHOR
Oksana Patron
Recommended for you
Despite the year almost at an end, advisers have been considerably active in licensee switching this week while the profession has reported a slight uptick in numbers.
AMP has agreed in principle to settle an advice and insurance class action that commenced in 2020 related to historic commission payment activity.
BT has kicked off its second annual Career Pathways Program in partnership with Striver, almost doubling its intake from the inaugural program last year.
Kaplan has launched a six-week intensive program to start in January, targeting advisers who are unlikely to meet the education deadline but intend to return to the profession once they do.
