The total number of advisers this week fell by another 31 to 17,251, and was driven by AMP Group and Insignia, according to Wealth Data.
Additionally, the financial planning peer group sector suffered a and week, which ended with a loss of 27 advisers, after earlier growth at the start of the year.
On top of this, fewer advisers were moving directly from one licensee to another this week, with a number of them having a gap.
“What was noticeable this week, which has been trending for a while, are less advisers switching in the week,” Wealth Data’s director, Colin Williams, said.
“We have seen advisers being hired who may have a gap between leaving and joining a new licensee. Many are experienced advisers who would have had salaried positions in the past. This week we saw a total of 59 advisers appointed but only 18 switched during the week.”
Altogether 36 licensee owners saw net gains for 46 advisers this week while 49 posted net losses for (-74) advisers. Following this, four new licensees commenced, all in the financial planning peer group and five were closed.
However, the industry saw only five provisional advisers (PA) who commenced this week and one who ceased.
AMP Group led the losses and was down by 11 advisers, after having appointed two and lost 13, with none of the 13 evidenced as being appointed elsewhere.
Insignia was down by five advisers, with one new appointment this week and six losses where one of those six commenced his own licensee and, according to Wealth Data, “was expecting a large practice that left Lonsdale to show up in next week’s report”.
Also, Highfield Group’s Insight investment services was down by four advisers, who had left to commence their own Australian Financial Services Licensee (AFSL).
Four other licensee owners were down by two advisers each, including Synchron and Ord Minnett, and there was a very long tail of 40 licensee owners who lost a net one adviser each.
Looking at the year to date data, Count was up 25 for the year while Castleguard (Lifespan) dropped back a little but was still up 13 for the year.
Also, four of the top five who posted gains were major businesses with large number of advisers, demonstrating that many advisers still saw value in joining a large firm as opposed to setting up their own AFSL.
As for losses, Insignia led the way and was down 47 while a large gap to AMP was down at (-18).
AIA continued to lose advisers and was now down (-10), followed by Findex which was also down at by eight advisers.
Source: Wealth Data
