The advice indsutry passed a grim milestone this week, with the annual net total of advisers to come off the Financial Adviser Registry pushing past 2,000 for the first time.
After the industry lost another 124 advisers this week, leaving 18,574 on the registry, the net losses for the year reached 2,062, according to research from Wealth Data.
A large portion of the week’s losses stem from the wind down of CBA’s Commonwealth Financial Planning, which contributed a net decline of 44 advisers after 74 came off the register and 31 commenced at AIA Financial Services.
CBA Group lost a net total of 75 advisers for the week.
Elsewhere, insittutional providers AMP (-38) and IOOF (-28) also suffered heavy losses as advisers who do not intend to continue practicing beyond the provisional December 31 cut-off date for the FASEA adviser exam left the industry.
Accountants offering SMSF advice under the limited licence provision have also left the industry en masse during the course of the year. Wealth Data notes that 105 licensees from the ‘Accounting – limited advice‘ group have closed in 2021, while none have commenced.
On the positive side of the ledger, licensee group Oreana experienced the most growth in 2021 to-date with a net increase of 37 advisers. Next came Centrepoint, which recently acquired Clearview Financial Advice and experienced a net increase of 15 advisers.
I have said it many times over the last decade and I still stand by those words, that Life Insurance Advice MUST be separated from Investment advice for the Industry to stabilise and start to grow.
I warned of the consequences and those predictions have come true.
There is little merit in standing by a principle that was wrong from the beginning, where specialist risk advisers are forced to study fields that have NIL bearing on the work they do and have zero benefit for Australians. We repeatedly warned the Government and the Regulators that Advisers will not accept unworkable and unreasonable regulatory imposts that made no sense, was a maze of complexity that no-one except Lawyers understood and would in actual fact, have the exact opposite effect of the purported, “more access to affordable advice” mantra that was repeated verbatim.
The solution is simple and can bring the Life Insurance Industry back from the precipice.
What is needed now is a willingness to listen and act upon sage advice and stop trying to please outside vested interest groups who would not know the meaning of Best Interest Duty, even if it bit them on their backsides.