The current crop of bad press regarding financial planners will be forgotten when the sector has become more professional with planner departures in recent years indicative of cultural change according to Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) national president Deborah Kent.
Speaking at an AFA Partner briefing in Sydney yesterday evening Kent said there had been damaging issues in the media about advisers more was likely to come but "those will be fading headlines on newspapers somewhere in someone's garage, they will be forgotten".
"There are already 2300 less advisers today than there were five years ago, this shows that cultural change is well advanced and forces of behavioural expectations are effective," Kent said citing Money Management Top 100 Dealer Group Survey data.
Kent said that more people receiving financial advice was not just a motherhood statement for the sector but the reality of where advice was heading and in driving advisers and licensees to choose change the expectations around the level and type of advice would climb as well.
AFA chief executive Brad Fox said while the need for cultural and professional change had been thought about and discussed for many years it was time to start enacting the change required by government and consumers.
He said the financial planning sector had moved past the point where basic changes were enough and faced disruption in the way it operates driven by consumer demand.
"This will be a place where value propositions will need to more than redesigned and reengineered. New business models not yet thought of or even heard of will shift the paradigm of financial advice," Fox said.
"This is not an evolution inspired by technology but a revolution inspired by consumer behaviour and expectations."
