Adviser numbers to settle at 14.8k by 2030: Wealth Data

The number of financial advisers will dip by a couple more hundred more over the next four years, according to a prediction from Padua Wealth Data.

The researcher, which tracks industry movements weekly, released the Australian Financial Adviser Market report on Tuesday which predicts 14,796 advisers on the ASIC Financial Advisers Register in 2030.

The researcher said this would be the middle-case scenario, based on the current trends of the past few years.

2030 projection	Projected financial advisers by 2030	Change from 2026
Upper bound	15,851	+839
Median	14,796	−216
Lower bound	13,845	−1,167

Source: Padua Wealth Data.

Despite over 10,000 financial advisers leaving the profession in the aftermath of the Hayne royal commission, a significant portion of the sector still has a couple of decades of experience, further placing the profession at risk if people retire out of the system without new advisers coming in.

Some 39.9 per cent of advisers have 20 or more years of experience, while just 13 per cent have fewer than five.

“The workforce is top-heavy and the replacement cohort is less than half its former size,” the report said.

The report stated there were 15,012 advisers at the start of the financial year (more recent data from the firm shows the FAR at 15,065 as of last Thursday).

“The market has stabilised at a historically low base after the deepest contraction in its history, but stability is not recovery,” the report said.

The number of advisers settled at fewer than 16,000 after the final deadline to pass the adviser exam deadline in September 2022 with only a net loss of a few hundred advisers a year rather than thousands. 

The report found 573 new entrants joined in the 2025 calendar year with 435 provisional advisers in the pipeline.

There are 21,113 people who have passed the adviser exam with 6220 exam-qualified people sitting outside the ASIC FAR.

The report said there are 3.6 million Australian entities that have a genuine need for advice, with 1.8 million of them aged over 60 years old.

Financial adviser entries versus exits per year

Source: Padua Wealth Data via ASIC data.

But that exodus has come at a cost for the remaining advisers, as industry levies that cover ASIC and the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort are divided between a shrinking pool of advisers, costing firms thousands of dollars a year per adviser.

Changing standards

The education deadline – the requirement to either have an approved tertiary degree or qualify for the experience pathway – came into effect at the start of the year, which only saw a modest drop-off from the FAR compared to the adviser exam deadline.

Most advisers were required to pass the adviser exam by the end of 2021, but  the former Morrison government gave a nine-month extension for advisers who failed the exam twice, which then-Minister for Financial Services Jane Hume said would give advisers a “clearer run” due to disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since then, the number of advisers has declined at a much slower pace.

Before the end of 2021, then-shadow minister Stephen Jones promised an Albanese government would offer advisers an experience pathway as an alternative to gaining a tertiary qualification.

After industry consultations before and after Labor formed government in 2022, the experience pathway passed Parliament, giving advisers with a cumulative 10 years’experience and a clean disciplinary record the opportunity to remain in the profession without a university degree or equivalent, or higher, qualification.

ASIC spent last year warning that some advisers may incorrectly be relying on the experience pathway and urging advisers to make sure records were up to date for those who were eligible for either the experience pathway or the education standard.

Earlier this month, an ASIC review found that 132 authorised representatives on the FAR didn’t have any qualifications or training courses listed which saw the expulsion of 26 advisers who didn’t meet the new requirements.

In his final months as minister, Jones announced at the Professional Planner Advice Policy Summit last February an expanded education standard.

Current Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino said that education reform was still on the table at FAAA National Congress last November, which has since gone to industry consultation this year and has widespread industry support.

Changing licensee models

The report also highlighted the industry split into a dual structure of scaled licensees and micro-licences: the majority of licensees run only one or two advisers (54.8 per cent), while the 29 largest licensees carry 38 per cent.

“The institutional licensee model that once dominated the profession has been replaced by a long tail of boutique licences; sole practitioners have opted to leave established licensees and set up their own licence,” the report said.

“For many, this gives them more freedom. These micro licences carry the market’s most experienced advisers and the least operational infrastructure, a combination that concentrates both succession risk and regulatory risk in the segment least equipped to absorb either.”

The exodus of the big four banks – colloquially known as “Wexit” – impacted the profession’s primary recruitment and training ground which has yet to be replicated by any current adviser network.

“The professional year requirement has raised the barrier to entry, but new advisers are being absorbed across licensees of all sizes,” the report said. “This restructuring is also visible by business model, with the profession consolidating around full-service financial planning while the accountant-linked and limited-advice models that once sat at its edges have all but disappeared.”