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The Financial Planning Association (FPA) remains Australia’s dominant industry body for financial planners, but in the contest for members it is the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) that has experienced the greatest migration of members.
A survey conducted by Money Management has revealed that while the FPA is the preferred industry organisation for financial planners, few planners who are members of other organisations have seen fit to migrate to its ranks.
By comparison, while the AFA did not rate as highly with respondents as their preferred industry organisation, it had nonetheless attracted six times as many migratory members.
Commenting on the survey data, FPA chief executive Jo-Anne Bloch acknowledged that a proportion of the migratory members picked up by the AFA might have been FPA members.
Referring to the FPA’s announcement earlier this year on the phasing out of commissions-based remuneration, Bloch said the board expected to lose members as a result of a number of issues, including remuneration, education and professional standards.
“Members don’t always like the higher standards and our enforcement of them,” she said.
However, Bloch said the FPA board was “absolutely committed to ensuring the FPA includes professional financial planners committed to the highest standards”.
“We won’t wait around for the Government to dictate the terms,” she said. “If some members can’t support that, then the AFA might be an alternative.”
Bloch also pointed out that the FPA’s membership had actually grown by 450 since the beginning of July.
AFA chief executive Richard Klipin said while the remuneration debate and the different policy positions adopted by the FPA and the AFA might have prompted some migration to his organisation, it did not represent the whole story in circumstances where membership had almost doubled in the past three and a half years.
“Our membership has been growing at 26 per cent a year and I believe that is owed to what we bring as an industry organisation and the leadership we provide in times of crisis,” he said.
“Ultimately, industry associations can only grow if they have relevance,” Klipin said.
