FPA's half a million reasons to restore licensee relationships
The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has more than half a million reasons to restore its good relationship with the licensees which pay for “Professional Partner” status.
Amid declining adviser numbers across the industry which have inevitable flow-through effects to revenue lines such as the Certified Financial Planning (CFP) designation, the Professional Partner program added $536,000 to the FPA’s balance sheet last financial year.
And even then, the most recent FPA annual report showed that the number of licensees which had paid to be Professional Partners had declined from 83 in 2018 to 70 last year, meaning revenue had dropped by $73,000 in 12 months.
The decline in Professional Partners was attributable, in part, to changes in ownership and the closure of a number of licensees.
The scale of future membership of the Professional Partner program has been put in question by licensee concern at the FPA’s proposals for an adviser registration regime which would effectively supplant authorised representative status under an Australian financial services license.
Six licensees, five of which were Professional Partners, earlier this month expressed concern at the FPA’s proposals and what they saw as a lack of consultation around policy development impacting AFSL holders.
While the FPA’s Professional Partner program declined in value to $536,000 last financial year, this paled beside the decline in the returns generated by its CFP program from $2,319,000 in 2018 down to $1,269,000 with a further decline expected this year as a result of adviser focus on the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority regime.
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