Licensees lag with reporting adviser numbers

This week adviser numbers continued to fall with a net change of -49, driving the net number of advisers further down to 17,621, but the decrease is slower than anticipated, according to Wealth Data.

Earlier this week Money Management reported that adviser numbers were expected to hit below the 17,200 threshold this month however it seemed the holiday period and COVID-19 caused many licensees to lag behind with their reporting to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

This was particularly apparent in the peer group of accounting – limited advice, a segment that mostly consisted of accountants providing self-managed super fund (SMSF) advice under restricted licences, which were yet to report.

According to Wealth Data’s director, Colin Williams, therse were mostly very small licensees who needed to remove themselves and close the license which might be more complex than expected.

“To put this into context, there are 258 ‘one adviser licensees’ and 50 ‘two adviser licensees’ in this peer group and they had some of the lowest Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority [FASEA] exam pass rates when this data was available,” Williams said.

This week saw 22 licensee owners with net gains of 33 advisers, while 46 licensee owners saw a net loss of (-81) advisers. At the same time, three new licensees commenced while eight licensees ceased.

The highest losses were reported by CBA, Consilium Advice, and Insignia Group (previously known as IOOF) which were all down by a net of seven advisers. These were followed by Synchron that was down by (-4), and four groups including AIA and WT Financial Group were down by three advisers.

According to the data, the largest group was Insignia with 1,239 advisers while AMP Group had 1,111 financial planners.

AMP Financial Planning was still the largest licensee, with 595 advisers, and was followed by SMSF Advisers Network (544) and Morgans, in third position, with 446 advisers.

Source: Wealth Data