Time for small advice firms to knuckle down

financial-planning/financial-planning-association/commonwealth-financial-planning/

19 March 2010
| By Benjamin Levy |

Several industry professionals speaking at the Financial Planning Association’s Small Principals' conference have urged small financial planning principal’s to develop a tighter grasp of their business financials.

MLC senior consultant in financial services Nicholas Hilton said small advice firms needed to have a better grasp of their financials if they want to manage another business downturn and manage future industry changes.

They need to develop a proper review of their financial performance, including measuring their cash flows, profit margins and ratios and prepare medium-term forecasts of their revenue stream, he said.

“Small principals should review and track profit margins and incorporate them into their strategic planning process,” he said.

“It’s particularly relevant given the potential for significant industry changes,” he said.

Small advice firms also need to understand the likely impact of these changes to their profit margins and cash flows, he said.

Hilton also said that many businesses still did not understand which of their clients were profitable, and they should consider selling their non-core clients.

He was still seeing practices where the A and B level clients were “subsidising” the C and D level clients, he said.

Hilton also said that a tightening labour market and higher compliance costs would reduce profit margins and advice firms needed to be far more efficient to maintain the levels of profit they are used to.

Alisdair Barr, head of Commonwealth Financial Planning, echoed Hilton’s comments, saying advice firms needed to know their numbers inside out and reward and encourage efficiency and improvements.

They had to determine what their weekly cash flows were, what revenue was coming into the business and their overheads, as well as have a grasp of variable and fixed costs, he said.

While Barr did not suggest selling unprofitable clients, planners need to investigate whether they were receiving value for the cost of what it took to service a client, he said.

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

1 month 3 weeks ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

2 months ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

4 months ago

Entireti has unveiled the new name for the AMP financial advice businesses that it acquired last year....

4 weeks ago

A Sydney financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any financial services, with the regulator deriding his “lack of integrity, trustworthiness and prof...

2 weeks 5 days ago

Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, has provided further information about the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms....

1 week 4 days ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS