More small licensees to be closed down
While further closures of small licensees are expected, adviser number reporting to the corporate regulator continues to lag due to the holiday season, according to Wealth Data.
The research house said it expected the net number of advisers to further slip to17,601 this week.
Wealth Data’s director, Colin Williams, said that he expected the number of advisers to further reduce and reach the level of between 15,000 to 16,000 during 2022.
“We suspect that some major licensees are yet to fully report their adviser movement with regards to Financial Adviser Standards and Ethic Authority [FASEA] exam requirements,” he said.
“We also believe that many advisers that are due to be taken off the Australian Securities and Investments Commission [ASIC] Financial Adviser Register [FAR], work in small licensees that will also be closed.”
As far as losses this week were concerned, Findex was down by seven advisers, of which none has appeared elsewhere, while Australian Advisory lost five advisers, all via their licensee Life Plan.
NTAA, that owns SMSF Advisers Network, was down four and four groups reported a loss of three advisers including two small licensees that now have zero advisers.
At the same time, PSK who now owns Ipac lost two advisers and 26 licensee owners were down by one adviser.
During the first month of 2022, Insignia Financial (formerly known as IOOF) lost 19 advisers for the year, and was followed by WT Financial Group, including Sentry, and Findex, which were both down by eight.
In the announcement made to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) yesterday, Insignia Financial said it had lost 118 advisers during the December quarter, largely through the loss of smaller practices in the self-employed channel as a result of the reset of management fees charged by IOOF to self-employed advisers.
On a more positive note, as far as the new licensees were concerned, the financial planning peer groups opened 12 and two were closed. The accounting – limited advice peer group, which offered advice to self-managed super funds (SMSF) advice only, saw six licensees close. This group was expected the experience significant losses once reporting caught up.
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