The FY22 financial year has seen 2,671 advisers leave the industry according to figures from Wealth Data.
At the start of the financial year there were 18,948 advisers on the ASIC Financial Adviser Register, which decreased to 16,277 by 30 June.
Wealth Data director Colin Williams said there were 126 who disappeared last week and most returned to new self-licenced AFSLs. The current number of advisers on the FAR is 16,406.
“A lot was driving it last year,” Williams says. “A lot were calling it quits because of the FASEA exam. They didn’t want to do the exam, so they just bailed.”
The end of FY21 saw a loss of 549 advisers. Much of the loss was attributed to the announcement of the ASIC levy being raised and advisers not wanting to pay the full annual fee if they were planning to leave in six months after the FASEA exam deadline.
The estimated FY22 ASIC levy was meant to be $3,138 per adviser plus a flat fee of $1,500 but was reduced to $1,142 with the $1,500 flat fee after Treasury intervened in August.
“We’ve got to be conscious of the fact there’s less advisers now,” Williams says. “With less advisers there’s going to be less movement. It definitely was far more volatile around the financial year and the end of December was volatile as well.”
A year of losses
The industry dropped below 18,000 advisers in January following the exam deadline exodus and fell below 17,000 in May.
At the start of the year the numbers dropped to 17,670 as the industry saw 847 adviser departures during December and the first half of January.
The end of January saw another 300-plus leave which was the deadline for advisers who didn’t complete the exam to come off the FAR.
“We didn’t really see the full effects of 31 December until the last few months because all these small licensees closing that were backdated to then as well,” Williams says.
The industry is still expected to see a sizable loss of advisers in October following the adviser exam extension.
Williams previously said almost 1,000 advisers on the FAR had yet to pass the exam and there is only sitting left before the deadline.
The final exam before the 30 September deadline will be held from 28 July to 1 August with enrolments closing on 12 July.
Some 318 candidates have passed the two exams held this year – 108 in the January exam and 212 in May.
By the end of the year, Adviser Ratings expects numbers the number of advisers on the FAR to reach 14,964, although 15,600 have passed the exam.
In any forward planning, there should always be an end game analysis, which is designed to crystal ball positive and negative impacts of the strategy to be undertaken going forward.
In Australia, it appears that the strategy, in some certain circles, is to ignore sensible arguments, that based on experience, could have led to the avoidance of negative impacts.
Rather, let us go forth and push ahead regardless of what those negative people say and when the end game results in what would have been a totally avoidable disaster, such as what has occurred with the Advice Community and especially the Advised Life Insurance Industry, which has seen triple digit premium increases for Australians and a cliff fast approaching, where Australians will no longer accept more increases and will cancel policies, preferring to take their chances rather than continue allowing themselves to be hit over the head, then there will a call for more investigations, headed up by the very people who started the lunacy in the first place.
Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
What is happening in Australia, is we are playing the numbers / statistic game, without even understanding what the numbers mean.
It is beyond belief, that there is total inertia going on, while the Industry continues to crumble and less true leadership to fix the issues NOW.