More than 60 licensees posted net adviser losses this week which translates into a total of 98 adviser roles, according to the weekly analysis of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC’s) Financial Adviser Register (FAR) by HFS Consulting.
Bell Potter and SMSF Advisers Network both reported a loss of seven advisers, while Financial Services Partners was down six. At the same time, both Garvan Financial Planning (GWM) (MLC) and Interprac down five adviser roles.
Following this, nine licensees had reported having lost two adviser roles each which was followed by a long tail of 46 licensees losing net one adviser roles, the firm said.
On top of that, eight licensees closed up this week effectively reducing their numbers to zero.
HFS’ director, Colin Williams, confirmed that again this week the majority of licensees that ceased operations were associated with accountants.
“At the licensee owner level, 48 licensee owners had net losses for a total of 91 adviser roles, with MLC Group having the greatest loss at eight(-8) followed by Bell Potter and NTAA (SMSF Advisers Network) both (-7). Easton Group and IOOF were both down (-6),” he added.
By contrast, looking at year-to-date numbers for the larger licensee owners, with more than 50 advisers on their books, MLC led the way for the adviser roles losses with (-97) and was followed by AMP Group (-93) and IOOF at (-88).
As far as the gains for the week were concerned, 27 licensees reported net adviser role gains of 36 roles, with RI Advice which continues its “switch” within the IOOF Group, leading the way.
Also, this week five new licensees, which accounted jointly for seven adviser roles, commenced their operations this week.
All in all, as of 22 April the number of actual advisers dropped to 20,241, while the number of adviser roles moved down to 20,617.
