Adviser numbers stabilise as many find new homes
Many of the adviser losses over the last few weeks have now found homes with new licensees, according to Wealth Data which analyses weekly adviser movements on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) Financial Adviser Register (FAR).
This was true for the most of the remaining Commonwealth Financial Planning (CFP) advisers, who ceased on the ASIC FAR last week, and formally made their move to AIA Financial Services, with a net change on the week of 31 bringing the total number of advisers at AIA to 62.
Wealth Data’s director, Colin Williams, said that PSK Financial Services Group had also emerged as a licensee owner after it had bought AMP’s Salaried Advice business Ipac in late November.
“PSK is a large firm of advisers who currently work under AMP’s Charter licence. It will be interesting to follow what other moves that may follow as AMP continues to rationalise its advice business. Nine advisers have dropped off the Ipac licence with the change in ownership,” Williams said.
As far as losses this week were concerned, AMP Group was down by 10 advisers, not including the losses at Ipac which was now sitting below PSK. Ipac was down nine advisers and, to date, none had been appointed elsewhere.
At the same time, three licensee owners lost three advisers including Diverger and CBA and eight licensee owners, including Synchron, were down by two.
Berkholts was now effectively closed as losing two advisers during the week meant it now had zero advisers.
A total of 24 licensee owners saw a departure of one adviser and two licensees closed and one commenced this week.
Looking at the year-to-date figures, AMP Group was now quite a bit smaller than IOOF after Ipac was removed, with a total of 1,144 advisers compared to IOOF Group at 1,298.
However, AMP Financial Planning was still the largest single licensee at 606 advisers, although it may fall below 600 very soon.
By comparison, at the start of the year, AMP FP had 806 advisers and had 1,156 at the start of 2020.
Source: Wealth Data
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