Small is the new big for financial planner growth
New licensees that offer holistic advice have seen the highest growth out of all all peer groups since the start of the year, producing a net growth of 124 adviser roles, according to Wealth Data.
Across the board, the industry saw 100 new licensees and 77 of these were in the holistic advice space. This accounted for a net change in adviser roles of 250, including 175 adviser roles in the holistic space.
Looking at closures, only 25 holistic advice licensees closed during the period, representing a total loss of 51 adviser roles, out of a total of 142 closures.
By contrast, the 142 closed licensees accounted for a total loss of -258 adviser roles, with closer analysis showing that the largest peer group in terms of adviser losses was across accounting – limited advice peer group which saw 94 closures and a departure of 156 roles.
Commenting on the growth of adviser roles within the financial planning peer groups sector, Wealth Data’s director Colin Williams said if the 77 new licensees, defined as licensees with less than 20 advisers and not associated with any larger groups, were looked at as one group they would make the 32nd largest licensee.
“To put the 124 roles into perspective, combined they would be the 32nd largest licensee. Compared to larger licensee owners with more than 50 advisers, only 14 in this cohort have had growth for a total of 86 roles. So, for 2021, small is the new big for financial planner growth,” Williams said.
Source: Wealth Data
As far as the overall year-to-date adviser numbers were concerned, this week saw Centrepoint move slightly further ahead of Oreana in terms of growth for licensee owners with more than 50 advisers.
Centrepoint saw growth of 21 advisers, followed by Oreana and Count Financial which posted a growth of 19 and 12 advisers, respectively, and were the only three groups to report double-digit growth.
At the other end of the table, IOOF Group (- 377), followed by AMP (-256) and NTAA (-119) saw the largest losses in adviser roles.
This week’s analysis of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Financial Adviser Register (FAR) also showed a decrease in adviser roles to 19, 346, while the number of actual advisers decreased to 19,065.
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