Zero change in adviser numbers supports stabilisation trend



Wealth Data’s key adviser movements reported no net change of advisers in the week up to 16 March, confirming the adviser market showed strong signs of stabilising.
The research house’s adviser numbers report in early March had echoed the sentiment with no new licensees commencing or closing that week.
Founder Colin Williams elaborated, “[This is] the first ‘zero’ change week that I can recall since putting out the weekly updates.
“We still saw 69 advisers who either resigned or were appointed and that number has been hovering around 70 for the past few weeks.”
Capstone was the only licensee owner to grow by more than 1 by having growth of +2, both advisers from separate licensees.
Meanwhile, 23 licensee owners were up by +1 each which included Morgans Group, AMP Group, UniSuper and Canaccord.
WT Financial group were down by (-4), losing 5 and hiring 1. The losses were at Sentry and Williams noted that it appeared a practice had decided to open up their own AFSL.
Meanwhile, NAB Group were down (-2), losing 1 at JBWere and the other from the bank.
Sequoia were down (-2) after losing 2 at Libertas while also moving advisers from Libertas to Interprac. Troy Macmillan (TWD Licensee services) was also down (-2).
Clime Group, Macquarie Group and Findex Group were among 16 licensee owners down (-1).
Insignia was also down net (-1) after hiring 4 and losing 5.
Following the announcement that CountPlus had acquired TAL-owned Affinia Financial Advisers licensee, Williams observed the total number of advisers at Count rose to 390.
This would make them the seventh largest group.
“The press release indicated that Affinia were generating net revenue to TAL of $3.029 million which equate to $25,669 per adviser,” he said.
“We used 118 advisers being the number at Affinia when the deal was announced. Count reported through its half yearly results that its wealth division recoded a ‘Reported Contribution’ of $5.722 million.
“This equates $20,955 per adviser at 272 advisers for the half year. If we simply double that, it would equate to $42,073 for a full year.”
Assuming all the revenue had been generated by advisers, Count also showed gross revenue for the half year of its wealth division at $55.78 million or $216,102 per adviser.
Williams said, “Again, if we double that, it would equate to a yearly amount of $432, 204 per adviser.”
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