The advice profession is going through changes never seen before: major institutions are out of advice, there is a transfer of informal power to advisers, and regulation is at a crossroad with regulators needing to balance affordable access and consumer protection.
CoreData has over the last 13 years researched advisers’ attitudes, their views on what’s important and how they value their licensee, but the veteran research firm believes this year’s results are different.
With banks out of financial advice following “Wexit” – the so-called exit of their wealth arms from financial advice – the rise of advice networks, the increasing move to self-licensing and a supply/demand gap of 1.7 million Australians in favour of advisers, advice practitioners are looking at an evolving landscape.
Capital is entering the market, aiming to work with profitable advice practices, but CoreData notes this capital isn’t without caveats.
The researcher wants to know how advisers feel about this evolution via a survey which can be completed here.
CoreData’s Adviser Research survey is used to better inform licensee leaders of the industry macro shifts they will face and how they should deal with challenges to best serve the needs of the advisers responsible for creating better financial outcomes for millions of Australians.
“We believe we’re going through this secular change and whilst we’re going through this, we need to actually understand what the advisers view of this is,” CoreData director Grahame Evans tells Professional Planner.
“From our perspective, you can sit back and throw rocks which some people do, or you can participate and have your say. This is very good to understand what other advisers are actually thinking.
“Give your views so that businesses can adapt to what is important to you, not through guess work.”
CoreData global CEO Andrew Inwood will present the results of this research at the upcoming Professional Planner Licensee Summit on 23-24 June in the NSW Blue Mountains. It’s a must attend event for any licensee head or self-licensed practitioner as the summit continues to help shape business decisions for major facilitators of the advice process.
The results of the survey will be reported back to advisers via this publication.
Leading the research, Evans is no stranger to the licensee world. He led GPS Wealth for almost a decade, often taking advantage of the insights found in the long-time research project.
“When I was running GPS Wealth, it shaped what we did to improve the business,” Evans says.
“Each year we would find out what we were doing well at and what we’re doing poorly at. That’s measured not just against what GPS did, but it’s measured against what’s considered important by all advisers that completed the research.”
Licensee leaders and advice practitioners of self-licensed firms can still register for the two-day event.
Evans says it’s not uncommon for licensees to thrive in area that means little to advisers – and “pat yourself on the back” – but that comes with the consequence it doesn’t build a better business.
“This actually allows you to find out how you’re doing compared with what other advisers think about a particularly area and that carries more weight than a bunch of industry specialists like me sitting down and hypothesising around that it is,” Evans says.
Since leaving the licensee world, one big shift Evans has noticed is a philosophical reassessment of what it is to own licensees and those who own multiple consider themselves advice networks.
“The new world is about servicing people, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re [part of] a licensee or self-licensed, they’ve got a service for you,” Evans says.
“To call them a licensee is not reflecting what they are.”
But while there has been a move to self-licensing, Evans says a lot of the firms still like to be part of a community.
“It’s a growing and bigger marketplace,” Evans says.
“They still like to access services, particularly where those services are being, quite often, developed for larger networks or larger licensees, and they can actually piggyback off that through that process as well.”
