This week saw a departure of another 90 adviser roles – more than three times compared to the same time period two weeks ago – with 48 licensees reporting a loss of at least one adviser role, according to HFS Consulting.
At the same time, only 26 licensees managed to grow their adviser base during this week.
The data, which relied on the analysis of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC’s) Financial Adviser Register (FAR), showed that AMP was responsible for a loss of close to 30 advisers this week given that 17 advisers moved away from Charter Financial Planning and another 12 departed AMP Financial Planning (AMP FP).
Further to that, this week brought the total of all lost adviser roles from the start of the year to 2,715, however the losses since July slowed down and stood at 544, HFS said.
AMP Group lost altogether almost 500 roles (486) which meant that AMP FP shed 30% of their advisers and Charter cut down adviser roles by a further 20% since the beginning of the year.
This stood in stark contrast to the sector’s landscape from 2015 when AMP FP alone had more than 1,700 advisers, according to Money Management’s TOP Financial Planning Groups Ranking.
However, as of the second week of December 2020, AMP Group saw the total number of advisers operating under its four licensees come close to 1,656 and was followed by IOOF Group (1,264) and MLC Group (886), according to HFS’ data.
As far as other mid-tier groups were concerned Easton Group and Sequoia Group had become one of the fastest growing owners of the financial planning groups and had 661 and 359 advisers, respectively, operating under their wings.
Following this, Centrepoint Group was on track to finish the year with around 320 advisers.
“It now appears likely that SMSF Adviser Network will end the year as the largest licensee as they are now only 17 roles behind AMP FP while at the start of the year, they were 230 roles behind AMP FP,” HFS Consulting’s director, Colin Williams, said.
“On the upside, Lifespan continued its steady growth that really started in July 2019 and have grown by 66 adviser roles year-to-date after gaining 2 more this week.”
At the same time, Interprac maintained its second position with 41 roles after four roles were lost this week.
