PIS ranked first
Professional Investment Services (PIS) has moved into top spot in the 2005-06 Money Management Top 100 Dealer Group survey, displacing AMP Financial Planning (AMPFP) as the nation’s largest group by planner numbers.
PIS added a standout 135 advisers in the 12 months to March 31, this year, pushing its total to 1,329 and leapfrogging AMPFP, which topped the 2004-05 Top 100 survey.
AMPFP, by contrast, shed 21 advisers to 1,259 this year, and fell to second place in the survey, the position that PIS held in the 2004-05 survey.
PIS’ achievement represents an amazing comeback from its abject performance in the 2003-04 survey, which coincided with the launch of the Financial Services Reform Act (FSRA).
It lost 167 advisers in that traumatic year for the industry, the biggest loss for any group in the survey, and a seemingly ominous omen for Australia’s largest independently-owned dealer group.
The result is, however, consistent with a quote from PIS managing director Robbie Bennetts last year that he would be “very disappointed if we did not grow by 100-plus advisers in 2006”.
Bennetts is also a rarity among this year’s top 10 groups in expecting to see planner numbers grow by between 50 and 70 per cent over the next 12 months, and also by more than 100 practices.
The turnaround in PIS’ fortune is amplified by PIS being one of only three groups in the top 10 of this year’s survey to register an increase in advisers.
The other two groups were ING-owned Millennium3, which added 219 planners, benefiting from its purchase of Synergy from Challenger in November last year, and Westpac Financial Planning, which added seven advisers.
Millennium3 was, in fact, the only change in the order of the top 10 groups this year, which is itself consistent with the survey finding that adviser numbers are stabilising after the launch of FSR.
Both Millennium3 and PIS’ adviser increases this year occurred against the backdrop of a small overall increase in adviser numbers across the top 100 dealer groups.
This year’s survey revealed an overall gain of 305 planners to a total 14,022, up from 13,717 last year, during which 475 planners were added across the 100 representative groups.
There were, however, some strong individual adviser increases in the middle to higher-rankings of the survey, notably Suncorp (97), Bridges (45) and ANZ Financial Planning (44).
Across the board, there were 62 groups that gained advisers in 2006, while 28 lost advisers and 10 were unchanged or new listings in the survey.
This compares to 59 groups that added advisers last year, 36 of which shed advisers, and five that had no change or were new to the list.
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