Mortgage brokers seek entry to financial planning
Research commissioned by the Financial Planning Association (FPA) has revealed a growing number of mortgage brokers seeking to enter the financial planning industry.
The research, revealed at the FPA national conference on the Gold Coast, appeared to reflect the fact that mortgage brokers are being brought under nationally consistent legislation following agreement having been reached between the Commonwealth and the states.
Using research commissioned by the FPA and undertaken by research house CoreData, FPA chief executive Joanne Bloch sought to define the attitudes of financial planners, mortgage brokers and accountants to the current market volatility and concluded that while planners remained reasonably optimistic, mortgage brokers were less optimistic while accountants were actually cautiously optimistic.
Equally important, the research tended to suggest that the financial planning industry in Australia would remain dominated by small business.
She said 66 per cent of businesses operating in the sector over the next five years were likely to be run by sole operators employing two or three people.
“The dominant business in financial planning will still be the small business,” Bloch said.
The research also revealed that around 8.5 per cent of financial planners were looking to exit the market altogether and that, contrary to the beliefs of some commentators, most planners were not looking to specialise.
The research suggested that financial planners on average had about 380 clients each but only regularly serviced around 40 per cent of them.
AUTHOR
Mike Taylor
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