The Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) has recorded over 8,700 members, including over 80 per cent of eligible practitioner members as of 30 June 2023.
According to FAAA chief executive, Sarah Abood, it is a “real vote of confidence” that such a large percentage of advisers have transferred or renewed their membership to the new organisation.
The advice organisation was formed in April this year, merging the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA) and the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA).
It commenced activities under the new name and logo from 3 April 2023 although the AFA formally wound up operations on 30 June.
After this date, those AFA members who have not transferred are no longer a member of any professional body and will not be receiving any membership services.
“The end of the financial year is the first big milestone for membership. This year it was the critical date for wind-up of the AFA and many of our members prefer to pay in the previous financial year in any case for tax reasons,” Abood explained.
She said the organisation is also seeing a number of reinstatement and new membership applications coming through.
“We hear every day from AFA members who need some help in completing the move to a new portal and some others who have been on leave,” Abood said.
“We will continue the offer to transfer and retain the membership start date for AFA members, on a similar basis as FPA heritage members, with a reminder that a late fee applies for renewals after 15 July.”
Looking at the numbers, some 1,563 AFA heritage members had transferred to the FAAA by the end of June.
Around 146 advised they didn’t plan to transfer.
On the FPA side, 6,377 practitioners and another 761 non-practitioners have already renewed for a total of 7,138. It marked a notable increase from previous years, when 6,876 FPA members had renewed in 2022 and 6,436 in 2021.
Abood encourages all members to renew as soon as possible.
“The more members we have, the more strength we have to create better outcomes for the financial advice profession,” she said.
“This is particularly important in advocacy, where there are plenty of issues on the FAAA agenda: including the unreasonable hike in the ASIC industry levy, the continuing consultation with the government on implementing the recommendations of the Quality of Advice Review, the legislation of the experienced pathway, and many more.
“We are also very focused on regrowing our profession, with major campaigns highlighting financial advice as a great career choice planned for later this financial year.
“Having a unified voice for the profession, representing the majority of financial advisers in the country, gives us a greater chance of achieving the changes our members are looking for.”
“We are also very focused on regrowing our profession, with major campaigns highlighting financial advice as a great career choice planned for later this financial year.”
Concentrate on your current advisers and their battles, settle this down and then worry about growing the profession. I would rather my advertising money the FPA spend be on generating new clients for us or better lobbying government officials. Get your mission focus sorted, is it looking after current members or building your membership base with our subscriptions?
“…AFA members who have not transferred are no longer a member of any professional body and will not be receiving any membership service.”
I honestly don’t know what kind of service these professional bodies provide, beside potentially some advocacy in parliament to represent the profession as a whole (as opposed to individual members), other than awards and discounted tickets to events.
I’d love to know what kind of value people are actually getting from being a member.