Budget and big super create tailwinds for advisers, licensees: Humphrey

Changes to capital gains tax and reduced borrowing capacity for property under the federal government’s proposed superannuation tax changes are pushing younger Australians toward superannuation and, combined with big super funds’ growing public advocacy for financial advice, are creating what Count Group chief executive Hugh Humphrey calls “structural tailwinds” for licensees and advisers.

On Thursday the ASX-listed Count announced a 15.6 per cent increase in group revenue to $165.9 million, underlying earnings before interest and tax of $33.4 million and underlying net profit after tax of $13.9 million, an increase of 27 per cent. It declared a three-cent-a-share dividend, taking the full-year payout to five cents a share, fully franked, up from 4.5 cents the year before. 

Earlier this week, Centrepoint Alliance – also listed on the ASX – revealed full-year revenue of $365.6 million, up 12 per cent on the previous year; normalised EBITDA of $12.3 million and net profit after tax of $6.4 million, an increase of 24 per cent. It declared a final dividend of 1.75 cents a share, taking its full-year payout to three cents a share.

Humphrey tells Professional Planner that “some really interesting dynamics out there” in the next several years will continue to buoy Count and businesses like it.

“The advice industry and the accounting industry, but advice [in particular], has been a real beneficiary of the federal budget changes,” Humphrey says.

“The advice industry has been a real beneficiary of the growth in superannuation and its importance. The advice industry has been a real beneficiary of superannuation funds, and to a lesser degree banks, talking a lot about the importance of advice and trying to find ways to provide that to their members and clients and customers.”

Count’s FY26 investor presentation says four budget and regulatory developments are driving advice demand: capital gains tax restructuring; reviews of discretionary trusts; changes to property and negative gearing; and new research and development incentives. 

It says 4.5 million Australians are already retired, with 156,000 more expected to retire in FY25 alone and more than 800,000 intending to retire within five years. 

Almost a third of the super market

The number of self-managed super funds, now worth $1 trillion of the total $4.5 trillion super pool, grew by a record 48,464 in 2025, taking the total to 653,000. Average household net worth has nearly doubled since 2014, from $858,000 to $1.66 million as at June 2025.

Humphrey says Count partners “really well” with a number of large profit-to-member super funds.

“Rest, UniSuper, a lot of them are formal business partners of Count, and a number of them send referrals, equally from the retail super space as well,” he says.

“So we think that ecosystem’s important.”

The introduction of the so-called new class of adviser, revived by Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino, has caused uncertainty among the businesses that potentially would employ them and, to the extent the public is even aware of them, among consumer groups as well, over what they’d actually be allowed to do. 

“The conversation around this new class of adviser, and what they can and can’t do, it’s confusing to call it advice, because it’s not advice,” Humphrey says. 

“When we talk about advice, it’s that deep understanding of a client, their full circumstances, what they’re trying to do in their life, and looking after their risk, their investments, their superannuation, their estate planning, their will.

“So, that’s not what the super funds are allowed to do, or indeed I think seeking to do. But it’s sort of a different market. The fact that they’re making noise about it puts attention on what we know is extremely valuable, which is advice.”

Reweighting divisions

Count’s wealth division’s contribution to group earnings climbed from 31 per cent in FY23 to 44 per cent in FY26. 

“Even going back to when I started, nearly four and a half years ago, we were almost 90 per cent of the earnings coming from the equity partnerships, and 10 per cent came from services and wealth,” Humphrey says. 

“In FY23, about 31 per cent of our earnings came from wealth. In FY26, that’s now 44 per cent, and when you look at the EBITDA on a pro forma basis, so not giving guidance, but if you added in the Oracle results, that’s 59 per cent of our earnings now coming from wealth.”

Count completed its acquisition of Oracle Group on 20 July 2026. Rebranded as Count Wealth, the business added 22 employed advisers across 14 offices nationwide.

“It’s really early days, we only completed that last month, so none of the Oracle results are included in these results,” Humphrey says. 

“What I was really pleased with, with the Oracle transaction, is that from the day we completed, we’d had it rebranded as Count Wealth, but we’d done an awful lot of work preceding completion, and we had a very supportive vendor who ensured that we had really good access to people. 

“All the key staff had signed employment contracts. We put through the annual remuneration reviews, we’d done the data migration… all of this before we’d actually completed, which is probably a bit unusual. But what it means is that we turned everything off on the Friday, we completed on the Monday, and turned everything on, on the Monday.”

Humphrey says the experience of Count’s earlier integrations of Count Financial, Affinia and Diverger helped smooth the Oracle process.

“As difficult as it is to land a deal and get that right, it’s much easier to do that than it is to integrate a business and run it well,” he says.

“Of the 10 acquisitions that we did in financial year 26, one of them was a direct acquisition, Tailored Lifetime Solutions, a strategic investment for a terrific firm,” Humphrey says. 

“As part of that investment, they bought another Count Financial licence, which is very much on strategy for us, but the other nine were tuck-ins. Broadly speaking, we tend to target half our growth to come from acquisitions and half from organic. 

“In wealth, almost all of that growth has been through organic, the licensing revenue is entirely organic growth, and investment solutions is entirely organic growth. In equity partnerships it’s a blend, maybe half-half. The organic growth has been driven by about 15 per cent increase in financial planning revenue, and accounting revenue tends to go at CPI-plus-a-little-bit, so 3, 4, 5 per cent.”

The sole acquisition in Count’s services division was the McGing actuarial consulting business that folded into Accurium.

Advice supply

Humphrey says the supply of advice to the Australian marketplace isn’t an issue that keeps him up at night.

“We don’t sit around thinking that the number of advisers is a problem for us,” he says.

“Is capacity constrained? Yes. Is there room for more advisers? Absolutely. But we’re seeing our advisers are seeing more and more clients every year, getting more efficient, more productive, and I think that we are much more readily going to be able to double the number of advised clients than we are double the number of advisers. 

“When you talk to the UK market, they have fewer advisers per head of population, it’s not uncommon for 400 clients per adviser over there. The regulatory settings have differences, but they’re probably the two markets that are the closest in points of comparison, and they’re working through that. So I think that’s the opportunity for us here too.”

Humphrey says the profession generally is only at the beginning of adopting artificial intelligence and automating advice processes.

“Technology and advice has been horrendous for decades, and it’s really starting to move,” he says.

Over the year, Count’s wealth division’s revenue rose 8 per cent to $45.8 million. Equity partnerships revenue rose 27 per cent to $87.1 million, and services revenue rose 8 per cent to $33.0 million with margin expanding to 34 per cent. 

Funds under advice rose 13.7 per cent to $43.0 billion and funds under management rose 66.1 per cent to $6.5 billion, both including Oracle. The group has set a 2030 target of $10 billion in funds under management.

Recruitment, productivity and M&A

Meanwhile, Centrepoint said its growth in the year ahead will be underpinned by adviser recruitment within its licensee network; productivity gains and further acquisitions in salaried advice; continued adviser take-up of its investment platforms; and ongoing investment in technology and artificial intelligence.

Chief executive John Shuttleworth said in documents released to the ASX that disciplined cost management and operating leverage lifted the company’s margins during FY26, while allowing it to continue investing in technology, compliance capability and future growth.

The company’s annual report said the market for adviser recruitment shifted during FY26, with M&A activity across advice practices driving further consolidation, and in some cases bringing forward adviser succession and retirement decisions. 

Centrepoint said it remains focused on recruiting and retaining advisers who align with its service model, professional standards and risk appetite.

It said it has established a technology roadmap and started building capability across adviser productivity, licensee monitoring and supervision, and technology consulting support.