Adviser market shows signs of stabilisation

The adviser market seemed to be stabilising for the first time in many years, with no new licensees commencing or closing in the week to 2 March. 

According to research by Wealth Data, such a trend could date back to pre-2016, the year that allowed accountants to commence providing limited SMSF advice on a restricted AFSL, which saw a flood of new ‘advisers’ come onto the ASIC FAR.

72 advisers joined or left licensees with the year-to-date growth at +41 advisers.

A relatively new licensee, Peninsula Wealth, secured six advisers - three advisers from the AMP Group (two from AMP Financial Planning and one from Hillross).

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MWL Group picked up an adviser from Lifespan and another from Associated Concepts.

Sequoia was up net two after hiring four advisers into Interprac and losing two. Three advisers had moved away from Consultum (Insignia) and Sequoia also moved a couple advisers across their own licensees, from Libertas to Interprac.

Overall, 16 licensee owners were up net one, including Shaw and partners, Sambe Investments, ASVW holdings and Morgans Group who hired the lone provisional adviser for the week.

In terms of losses, AMP Group was down three, with only one showing as current.

Centrepoint Group was down four, with only one showing as current.

Lifesherpa was down three though Wealth Data expected all three to reappear soon on the FAR under a new licensee.

After losing net six advisers last week, Insignia was down net five, having lost seven advisers and gained an adviser from AMP Group and Centrepoint each. 

22 licensee owners were down by -1 each including Diverger, Industry Super Holdings, Viridian and WT Financial Group.

Additionally, acknowledging naysayers who questioned consumers’ interests in adviser qualifications, the research house inquired with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) as to how frequently the Financial Adviser Register (FAR) search page was visited. 

The FAR was a database of individuals who provide personal advice on life insurance, superannuation, and investments. It offered insights into an adviser’s experience, qualifications, and memberships of professional bodies.  

“I checked in with ASIC who run the ‘Moneysmart’ website which includes the ‘Financial Adviser Register - Check a financial adviser’ search page,” explained Colin Williams, Wealth Data founder.

"The answer was a whopping 40,000 views per month."

He added, “That’s an incredible amount of views and highlights that checking out an adviser through a government funded website is very important to a lot of people. 

“We didn’t get a breakdown of the viewers but I presume they come from all walks of life.”

With the FAR generating significant traffic, it was more reason than ever for advisers to update their qualifications on the register, Williams said, while noting the Moneysmart website wasn’t without its issues in the way it highlighted qualifications. 

“Advisers have their qualifications listed and if they have an approved qualification, it is shown as ‘Approved Qualification’,” he explained.

“It would be understandable for a user of the website looking for an adviser, to value an ‘approved qualification’ higher than any other qualification, even though an adviser can be very well qualified without having an approved qualification.” 

Approved qualifications initially appeared as FASEA approved qualifications, Williams noted, though there was no clarification he could find to differentiate between an approved qualification and any other qualification. 

The ASIC FAR showed 64% (10,097 advisers) have a degree of some description under ‘General Qualifications and Training’ however only 38.2% of advisers had an entry of any description under ‘Approved Qualifications’.

100% of advisers did have an entry under general qualifications and training.