10 more AFSLs close, advisers exit

This week saw another 10 licensees which chose to close, on top of eight licensees which closed last week, which translated into yet another loss 17adviser roles, according to the weekly analysis of the Financial Adviser Register (FAR) by HFS Consulting. 

Colin Williams, the firm’s director, said that only eight of 10 closed licensees were accounting based firms and there would be ‘a lot of more closures’ by June 30 as well as by the end of the calendar year. 

This week also 62 licensees reported net adviser losses for a total of 112 adviser roles and, at the licensee owner level, IOOF were down 16 roles, Perks lost six while both AMP and Easton were down five adviser roles each. 

As far as licensees were concerned, Financial Services Partners saw a departure of 10 adviser roles, Bridges Financial Services was down eight roles and Perks & Associates lost six roles.  

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Williams said that there was again a log tail of losses with 14 licensees down by two and 39 licensees down by one role. 

At the same time, 36 licensees made net adviser role gains of 64. 

“Leading the way was Hoxton Capital Management, a UK based firm with nine taking its Australian holding to 11. All nine advisers appear based overseas, eight in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one in the UK. None had prior entries on the ASIC FAR,” Williams said. 

The week’s analysis showed another drop in the number of actual advisers to 20,153 from 22,201, with 90 adviser roles having been appointed, of which four were new provisional advisers and nine were overseas based advisers. 

At the same time, 138 roles were reported as ‘resigned’ giving the net total of 48.