GFC takes a heavy emotional toll
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Three advice firm principals aligned to dealer group Australian Financial Services (AFS) have been placed on suicide watch by the dealer group in the past 12 months, according to dealer group principal Peter Daly.
Daly told the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) conference on the Gold Coast earlier this month that this illustrated the personal toll the global financial crisis was having on planners.
Daly made the revelation during a panel discussion and was responding to a delegate who had questioned the support that dealer groups in general offered their members during the global financial crisis, and the fallout from recent sector firm collapses and compliance and remuneration issues.
Joe Nowak, principal of Brisbane advice firm Joe Nowak Financial Services Group and a three-time national president of the AFA, told the panel of dealer group heads about his concern at a lack of dealer group support.
“In the past 12 months, when we have been through a terribly tough time on numerous issues, advisers have been left alone in the trenches as a lot of the dealer groups left town.
“That was a real concern for me, and I am pretty passionate about it. I want to know from you that if there is another crisis, are you going to leave town again or are you going to [get] behind us?”
Daly responded that AFS had “spent a hell of a lot of time working with our individual practices, working with them on their cash flows, particularly”.
“We had to support quite a number of our practices to get through this period, as successful as they might have been in the past.
“We actually had three of our practice principals on suicide watch, and that takes you to a whole new dimension in adding support to your practices.”
AXA Financial Advice Network’s head of acquisitions and succession, Steven Davison, said the global financial crisis had “pressure tested the system to its maximum both at the practice level and from our level as a provider of licensee services”.
“We have had some practices that have really struggled and we have had to work very hard with them to get through this period.”
Equally, the crisis has “sorted the wheat from the chaff” in terms of dealer groups, Davison said.
“We’ve seen a flight to quality in this period in terms of where advisers have moved from certain groups to other groups in the past 18 months to two years,” he said.
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