Financial planner exits continue amid education changes
Financial planning groups owned by the major institutional players such as the Big Four and AMP saw a combined loss of 600 financial planners this year, according to Money Management’s TOP 100 Financial Planning Groups Survey.
Amongst the backdrop of several challenges within the industry, overall planner numbers across the largest financial planning groups saw a slight drop since the last survey.
The ongoing push towards further improvement of educational requirements for existing and new planners resulted in a lower number of companies reporting that they hired new advisers.
Of all the surveyed companies, less than 40 per cent reported a growth in their overall planner numbers, however the aligned groups represented only 15 per cent in this set.
Although the make-up of the top 10 largest groups by planner size had been fairly stable over the past few years, this year saw an addition of another non-aligned group, Dover Financial Advisers. For the second year in a row the firm posted the single biggest increase, in absolute terms, with the addition of 72 new advisers.
Synchron, which increased its headcount this year by five per cent to 445 planners, was the only other non-aligned group in this set and managed to retain its position for the third year as the largest non-aligned group.
Westpac-owned Securitor Financial Group, which saw a departure of five per cent of its planners, has been pushed down the ranking and outside the top 10 list.
Money Management’s TOP 100 Financial Planning Groups Survey will be available in the next magazine edition of Money Management out 28 September.
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