The past week saw 74 adviser roles appointed while 99 adviser roles ceased, which gives a net loss of 25 roles, however the true story is that 33 actual advisers left the industry this week, according to the analysis by HFS Consulting which looks at adviser numbers from the Financial Adviser Register (FAR) run by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Colin Williams, HFS’ director, explained this was due to Apogee Financial Planning having appointed the same adviser three times, which most likely was an error, while at the same time BDO appointed three advisers, of which two still had their roles at Godfrey Pembroke. Following this, Evans and Partners appointed three advisers who also held roles at Dixons, its related business.
“This week’s analysis of the ASIC Financial Adviser Register (FAR), shows a reduction of (-25) adviser roles from 20,902 to 20,877 but the number of actual advisers dropped by (-33) from 20,569 to 20,536,” Williams said.
“Currently there are 16, up one from last week, advisers with three roles and 309, up six from last week, advisers with two roles.”
The chart below shows the number of ‘excess’ roles for advisers at licensees that fall under the licensee owner as opposed to the actual number (‘count’) of advisers, which indicates that advisers are authorised at more than one licensee, according to the HFS data.
At the same time, this was a big week for provisional advisers with six appointments, a record for one week, Williams said.
“It was good to see six provisional adviser roles appointed for the week and the last two quarters have easily been the best for provisional adviser appointments,” he said.
Williams explained that as provisional advisers complete their professional year and required qualifications, they are registered simply as advisers and given a year commencement date of being an adviser.
“For the 2021 commencement date there are 11 current advisers, one more than for whole of 2020 which was at 10 and only seven for 2019,” he said.
“This is a far cry from 2018 whereby 2,291 current advisers commenced and in 2016 when 1,727 commenced.”
As far as the gains for the week were concerned, 37 licensees made net adviser roles gains for the week, with Wealth Trail, trading as Freedom Finance Australia, with seven taking their net gain to 16 for the year and 30 since July 1, 2020.
On the opposite side, Synchron led the losses with (-11) roles and only two were appointed elsewhere to date while Financial Services Partners (FSP) lost seven advisers to Wealth Trail and GWM (MLC) losing six roles and only two were appointed elsewhere.
In total 46 licensees had a net loss of adviser roles for the week and three licensees effectively closed for a total of (-7) adviser roles.
