Centrepoint Alliance welcomes ‘green shoots’ in adviser landscape

There are ‘green shoots’ appearing in the financial adviser market, according to Centrepoint CEO John Shuttleworth, with the firm looking to grow its network via organic and inorganic growth.

The number of advisers has fallen from more than 21,000 in September 2020 to around 15,600 in June 2023, but the last few quarters have reported far smaller than in 2020 while the number of professional year graduates has risen from 10 a year ago to almost 100.

Centrepoint Alliance has 511 authorised representatives (ARs) operating under its licence and 196 self-licensed practices supported by an estimated 797 advisers. 

Funds under advice was $64 billion with $50 million on average per adviser.

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In a webinar following the release of its FY23 results, Shuttleworth said: “The Quality of Advice Review has seen some positive changes and, in addition, the government announced the experience pathway which is legislation recognising advisers’ prior experience and exempts them from the higher education standards. That may result in some re-entering the industry and prevent some terminations that had occurred in the past.

“These are positive for the industry and the best it has felt for some time.”

The firm said it has two key strategies to grow its adviser network and expand its service offering. 

Over 360 advisers are in discussions with the licensee, divided between 271 who are licensed ARs and 93 self-licensed firms.

Shuttleworth said: “A core part of our business is around growing our adviser network via organic growth and M&A opportunity if we can find the right business that we can harmonise into the network.

“But we also are looking at building revenue adjacencies by looking at services that are in the market and if we think we can provide a competitive edge or a new service that advisers want to use, then we are absolutely looking at it.

“That’s things like lending, managed accounts and paraplanning.”

Centrepoint Alliance has already launched six diversified portfolios on the CFS FirstChoice platform last month and is expecting to imminently launch five diversified managed accounts called IQ SMAs.

“Over the last 12 months, the focus has been on strengthening governance and developing a range of separately managed accounts that will be distributed on partner platforms.

“Managed accounts have seen explosive growth over the last few years to $144.5 billion and the reason is they are highly efficient because not only do you have an investment manager running the portfolio, if advisers use them they don’t need to issue a statement of advice because they are professionally managed,” he said.