This week the Financial Adviser Standard and Ethics Authority (FASEA) revealed that only 70% of advisers with the ‘current’ status on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Financial Adviser Register (FAR) have passed its exam.
However, according to Colin Williams, director at Wealth Data, to fully comprehend the numbers context was needed.
He reminded that a large number of (over 1,300) advisers passed the exam but did not hold the current status as per the ASIC’s FAR.
“FASEA stated this week that some 70% of ‘active’ advisers had passed the exam. This equates to around 13,544 advisers which is what we stated last week or 71% of our FAR database which excludes timeshare advisers and most FX advisers,” he said.
“Some context is required in that the number of adviser roles on the FAR have been reducing dramatically since the introduction of FASEA. For example, the 13,544 passes would equate to 65% of advisers at the stat of this year, 57% of advisers as of Jan 1, 2020 and 48% as of Jan 1, 2019.
“Therefore, the pass rate of 70% is not really telling the full story.”
According to Williams, the banks contributed to heavy losses as they retreated from advice in 2019, however, FASEA played a major role in the losses and made it harder to recruit much needed new advisers.
As far as adviser year-to-date numbers were concerned, Centrepoint overtook Oreana in terms of the number of new advisers it had acquired so far this year for groups with over 50 advisers.
Centrepoint grew by four advisers this week, jumping to a net growth of 20 adviser roles, and ahead of Oreana at 19, and CountPlus with a growth of 12 adviser roles ended up in third.
At the same time, IOOF saw growth over recent weeks and currently had 1,440 advisers, which was 101 adviser roles ahead of AMP Group with 1,339 which continued to see losses, and was down (-21) for this financial year.
This week, the number of actual advisers dropped to 19,070, with Novus Capital leading the losses with (-5) advisers, with all losses dated in June, and was followed by Longhou Investments which was down to one adviser after losing three adviser roles.
During the week, 10 licensee owners lost net two roles including AMP Group, Clime, Affinia and Evans Dixon, and 25 licensee owners lost net one adviser role each.
