Small self-licensed advisers, who are associated with financial planning and investment advice peer groups, has been the only area of growth in terms of advisers year-to-date, according to Wealth Data.
In the financial planning peer group segment there were 37 licensees with 127 advisers, collectively, that closed during the year. However, the industry saw an arrival of 95 new licensees, accounting for 219 advisers, which gave a positive net growth of 92 advisers.
Wealth Data’s director, Colin Williams, said: “To put this into perceptive, it is the exact same growth as all growth for licensee owners with 50 or more advisers that have had some actual growth this year.
“However, the actual net growth of this sector of licensee owners with 50 or more advisers stood at [a loss of] (-1,554).”
The second area of growth took place across the investment advice peer groups sector. This year so far, four with 10 advisers closed down but there were 11 new licensees with 44 advisers jointly, giving a net growth of 34 advisers.
The data showed losses across all other peer groups with accounting-limited model focused on limited self-managed super fund advice being the hardest hit after posting -24.22% of negative growth to a loss of under 3% (-2.17%) for licensees operating in the investment advice model, with a stronger focus on portfolio advice.
Taking into account only licensees that commenced this year with zero to 20 advisers and were not associated with any larger groups, 168 licensees shut down and 121 licensees started operations during the year.
Most closures took places across the accounting-limited advice peer group (101 licensees) which accounted for a loss of 183 advisers year-to-date and there were no new licensees that launched.
Source: Wealth Data
As far as losses this week were concerned, IOOF saw a net loss of 21 advisers, after three new appointments and 24 resignations. It was followed by AMP Group and Ord Minnett which both saw a departure of 12 advisers.
According to Wealth Data, while five ex-Ord Minnett advisers were reappointed at Oreana there were no former AMP Group advisers that had yet been reappointed elsewhere.
The overall number of advisers continued to fall and stood at 18,887 this week, according to data from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC’s) Financial Adviser Register (FAR).
