A surprising week for adviser numbers
The net change of advisers this week stood at 13, marking the first gain after many weeks of adviser numbers falling to 17,295, as per the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Financial Adviser register (FAR), according to Wealth Data’s analysis.
The firm’s director, Colin Williams, said the previous estimate assumed the numbers would have fallen to 17,227 in January, however, he said, this was based on the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA)’s reports from last year.
The other positive this week was a “nice surge” of provisional advisers, with a net increase of 28 year to date with a total of more than 200 as per ASIC’s FAR data.
“There is some encouragement in the numbers for 2022. For example, as reported last week, over 50 ex-CBA salaried advisers have moved to other licensees outside of AIA, the firm that did a deal with CBA,” Williams said.
“We do suspect that not all licensees have reported to ASIC the required adviser losses based on advisers not passing the FASEA exam and many advisers are allowed to keep practicing subject to failing at least twice last year. It may take a bit of time for all of this to wash through the system.”
Year-to-date, Insignia, formerly known as IOOF, led the losses and already saw a departure of 33 advisers. It was followed by Fiducian, which was down by 18 advisers, with far more advisers dropping off the Australian Central Credit union licence than being appointed to the Fiducian licence at this stage.
Also, WT Financial Group, which included Sentry and Wealth Today, lost nine advisers since the start of the year.
In general, this week saw 34 licensee owners having posted net gains for 61 advisers, while 33 licensee owners had net losses of 47 advisers.
Following that, two new licensees commenced and two were closed and nine provisional advisers (PAs) commenced.
Source: Wealth Data
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