How to get advice to middle Australia
The re-emergence of digital advice coupled with hybrid models will help deliver advice to middle Australia, a cohort who does not require a face-to-face advice but often remains excluded due to high costs, according to Link Advice.
Duncan McPherson, General Manager, Link Advice, said that one of the key things for his business is the re-emergence of digital advice and the importance of the advice support.
“The financial planning model needs to be able to provide more advice to more people. The key thing for us is how do we get advice to middle Australia to those everyday Australians who do not have complex advice needs or complex situations,” he said.
“We think that digital has a role to play because those people often do not have probably the situation that demands face to face advice.
“We are investing our time around telephone advice, so telephone and digital, the hybrid advice which would allow us to provide the service to that everyday Australian cohort who probably do not need to have face to face to advice for a number of different reasons.”
Asked about the advice opportunity and market consolidation, McPherson said that one of such sectors were superannuation funds.
“We have certainly seen the merger of superannuation funds, which we provide the advice to the members and we see that obviously that trend is continuing and we see it directly having a beneficial impact on their model and the advice opportunity,” he said.
“A lot of the clients sit in corporate and industry superannuation funds. So, we will see a lot of movement in that in the first six months of 2022 and the relationship between those funds and advisers is becoming really healthy,” he said.
According to McPherson, finding new clients along with operational efficiency and cost reductions were one of the key challenges for advisers.
Recommended for you
As the first quarter of 2024 comes to a close, Money Management looks back on the corporate regulator’s bans and AFSL cancellations in the financial advice sector.
Insignia Financial is holding ‘relatively steady’ onto its rank as Australia’s second-largest financial advice licensee after the Godfrey Pembroke exit but Count is hot on its heels.
Liberal senator Slade Brockman has said the government needs to have a “cold hard look” at the level of regulation in the financial advice space and the costs of running a business.
FAAA chief executive, Sarah Abood, has warned changes in the first tranche of the QAR legislation around advice fees documentation could create more work for advisers rather than less.