Planners upbeat with market conditions

Sentiment among Australian financial planners is about as good as it gets, according to the latest ASSIRT Wealth Insights data.

The data, the result of a survey conducted in April and covering a sample of more than 400 financial planners, reveals almost unprecedented levels of positive sentiment, not only with respect to current conditions but moving into the future.

According to the managing director of Wealth Insights, Vanessa McMahon, the latest research findings highlight the sheer confidence of advisers.

“Such openly positive sentiment and an obviously thriving industry are led by a fourth consecutive year of upbeat investment markets,” she said. “Business is brisk and advisers are very happy.

“The general mood of most advisers is very positive, which is in stark contrast to a few years ago when advisers were struggling with the introduction of Financial Services Reform, poor investment markets and highly publicised shadow shopper surveys,” McMahon said.

The survey was conducted in the first two weeks of April and is available from Wealth Insights.

Asked whether in their role as a financial planner, times were “good or bad for you right now?” an overwhelming 87 per cent of respondents said things were either “good” or “very good” right now, with 59 per cent indicating things were “good”, while 28 per cent said things were “very good”.

The survey respondents were equally bullish when assessing how the market would treat their clients over the next 12 months, with nearly 95 per cent expecting that returns would be in positive territory.

The planners were asked to think about the financial planning industry as a whole, and then to assess whether returns on the average portfolio “will be good or bad over the next 12 months”.

The data revealed that 95 per cent of respondents expected average, good, or excellent returns, with only 5 per cent expecting below average returns.

What was particularly significant about the data was that it indicated that 51 per cent of respondents were expecting good returns, while 2 per cent were expecting excellent returns.

The good news for the financial planning industry is that most of the respondents expect that the good times will continue to roll through the next 12 months, with 77 per cent indicating they expected to be either “better off” or “much better off”.

Asked whether their businesses would be “better-off or worse off over the next 12 months”, 67 per cent of respondents said they expected that it would be better off, while 10 per cent said they believed it would be much better off.

Twenty-one per cent said they believed their businesses would be much the same and 1 per cent said they believed they were likely to be worse off.

The good news for the Federal Government flowing from the survey is that financial planners are generally very positive about the state of the economy.

The respondents were asked to think about economic conditions in Australia as a whole, and whether they thought the Australian economy would have good times or bad times over the next 12 months.

Sixty-one per cent of the planners said they expected economic conditions to be good or very good, while 37 per cent said they were expecting both good and bad. Two per cent said they expected bad conditions.