Colin Williams (left) and Nicolas Peña Mc Gough

Fewer advisers moved between licensees last year, but in a shrinking industry the proportion of advisers moving has increased.

According to analysis from Wealth Data and Adviser Ratings, 1595 advisers switched licensees last year, which trended down from roughly around 2,500 each in 2020 and 2021.

Proportionally speaking, roughly 7 per cent of advisers switched in 2019, 9 per cent in 2020, 8 per cent in 2021 and 10 per cent last year.

Adviser Ratings econometrician Nicolas Peña Mc Gough tells Professional Planner the researcher is currently doing final checks for the upcoming Musical Chairs report due in a couple of weeks.

“We’ve seen over 2000 [advisers each year] for the past six or seven years [switch licensees] and in 2022 it was under 1600,” Peña Mc Gough says.

Wealth Data principal Colin Williams also confirmed movement between dealer groups has slowed.

“A lot of practices are hiring advisers and they’re finding ex-advisers who have been struggling to find a job, so that’s a positive,” Williams says.

“On the negative side, there’s still people retiring. Do we have enough newcomers to balance retirements? That’s the balancing act at the moment.”

As of Thursday morning, the ASIC Financial Adviser Register sat at 15,855, and has stayed under 16,000 since the fallout of the October adviser exam deadline.

Williams and Peña Mc Gough expect numbers to remain steady after losses of thousands each year since the end of the Hayne Royal Commission, but both note the experience pathway will be a key factor in shaping departures before the 2026 deadline to hold a relevant tertiary qualification kicks in.

“That will determine a lot on how many people will leave, especially the people with more years of experience,” Peña Mc Gough says.

Williams also notes that for departed advisers from the banking networks like ANZ, it was expected they had completed left the industry, but this wasn’t the case.

“They came back; Count hired quite a few and the majority of these people came back into advice,” Williams says.

“There are advisers coming back and new entrants which is good. It’s not enough but it’s much better than what it was at this time last year.”

Top of the world

The shift of business models in the industry has seen Insignia Financial (1074) become the largest licensee in the country, over AMP (933).

Williams says in the case of AMP advisers, they left the industry all together, but Insignia advisers took a different route.

“The majority of [Insignia advisers] were not leaving the industry they were going somewhere else and a lot that was starting up their own AFSL, including in conjunction with Insignia,” Williams says.

The mid-level licensees that round out the top five are Centrepoint Alliance (515), Wealth Today (470) and Morgans Financial (430).

Williams adds many of the mid-level licensees have performed consistently over the turbulent past couple of years.

“Centrepoint has been steady for two years,” Williams says. “They have an appeal to a certain type of adviser [and] they’re always hiring.

“Count [Financial] tends to appeal to those groups that still want to have a relationship with an accountant but a full financial planning relationship, not a restricted one, and they’ve done well to promote that type of business.

“There are smaller groups that have grown but levelled off, like Oreana [Financial Services], which is at about 100 advisers now.”

Making an entrance

The last two years have seen an uptick of new advisers joining with 245 joining in 2021, 341 last year and 14 already registered in the new year.

Williams says the number of new entrants has been a positive, albeit modest.

“It’s higher than I thought I thought it would’ve been, because up until the second half of 2022 it was crap,” Williams says.

“The numbers were terrible and out of the blue it has picked up. It’s not as if you can pinpoint the reason why we have all of them is because [for example] super funds are hiring them all… it’s pretty much across the board.”

It’s a stark contrast to 2019 and 2020 which saw fewer than 100 new advisers combined over the two years.

Having spoken to the universities, Peña Mc Gough says anecdotally they’re not seeing a significant uplift.

“There’s people going into wholesale advice or consulting because there’s less regulations required compared to retail advice.”

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