‘Complementary, not competing’: Nexia Sydney on new class of advisers

Nexia Sydney says the proposed new class of advisers is a positive for the advice profession, as they will be able to provide basic financial advice to those who cannot afford the services of professional advisers, but is concerned about what sort of regulation these new providers will be under.

“I’m conscious that it is already a very complex world that we live in financially,” Christine Atencia, partner, financial services at Nexia Sydney tells Professional Planner.

“If you’re not financially astute, it’s hard to make decisions that are in line with your individual goals and objectives. The benefit is that it makes financial advice accessible to a wider range of individuals who likely need it.

“For those with more complex financial circumstances, there will continue to be an important role for fully qualified financial advisers. We see the different advice channels as complementary rather than directly competing.”

But she urges caution as the new class of advisers would not be subject to the same compliance obligations and regulatory requirements as a fully qualified adviser.

“I hope that consumers are provided with transparency and guidance regarding the distinction in adviser class, as well as the scope of advice that can and cannot be provided so they can make an informed decision as to which adviser class is suitable for their individual needs,” she says.

The NCA, which can initially only be employed by APRA-regulated superannuation funds and life insurers, will have prohibitions against commissions, bonuses and volume-based payments.

Following the Royal Commission, the number of financial advisers was significantly reduced and resulted in advice costing more. “As a result, accessibility and affordability of advice remain ongoing challenges for the profession and policymakers,” Atencia says.

“The challenge for policymakers is balancing consumer protection with accessibility, ensuring Australians can access quality advice at a price that remains affordable. The Delivering Beter Financial Outcomes [DBFO] reforms are intended to improve access to financial advice by reducing unnecessary complexity and supporting more efficient advice delivery. The key measure of success will be whether this can be achieved.”

She believes that the new class of advisers also presents an opportunity for fully qualified wealth and financial advisers.

“We expect there will continue to be strong demand for fully qualified financial advisers, particularly for clients with more complex financial circumstances. The proposed new adviser class appears intended to address more straightforward advice needs, which may complement rather than replace comprehensive financial advice.”

Nexia growth plans

The audit, wealth and tax firm claims to have grown “significantly” in the last decade and plans to build on this growth. It appointed Paul Cottingham as chief strategy and growth officer in mid-August to lead these plans. Cottingham tells Professional Planner he is looking at what service offerings can be added to the business.

“We don’t want to chase revenue for the sake of chasing revenue. It needs to be aligned with our growth strategy,” Cottingham says. “Some good services that we feel our clients will want, maybe some tech advisory in future, and then also bring in some lateral hires and partners to help strengthen our bench.”

From a client perspective, he says that Nexia will look at how to make clients more successful and then introduce them to other parts of the firm. Owners who may be looking into retirement and an intergenerational transfer of wealth it is where the wealth team comes in.

Beyond growing through M&A, Nexia believes in promoting from within and that is how all their current advisers have come to the role. Atencia herself started as a postgraduate in an administration assistant role within business advisory, then moved to the wealth team where she is now a partner. “We’re really big in nurturing our existing staff as a starting point,” she says, adding that this is across the whole business.

“We’ll always prioritize identifying key people within our team first, and we have advisers now who went through the professional year [here].”

Atencia says that the entry into financial advice is a lot harder, but she has seen some “really ambitious young prospective financial advisers”.

Nexia has five full-time financial advisers managing between 200 and 220 clients in total. “If you look at the client life cycle, going from a business establishment all the way to exiting out of business, intergenerational wealth and estate planning, the wealth piece or the financial planning piece, there’s a component to play in each of those,” Atencia says.

“The complexity around each of those stages of life, where there’s a huge link between tax, the tax advice, or the business advisory advice, or the corporate advisory advice… in terms of the firm’s growth opportunity, as the firm grows, we would very much see the financial planning and wealth division to grow with that too.”

Atencia says she would like to have at least another one or two advisers on board by 2030. At the same time, she says the current team has capacity at the moment and the priority is to make sure they are working at full capacity not just for financial reasons but making sure “we are working with high calibre clients that fit within the wider firm’s desired client profile. So, nurturing our budding advisers or the ones that want to become advisers too”.

“We’ve got anywhere between 140,000 to 160,000 individuals who are retiring every year for the next five-plus years, so that presents a huge opportunity for advisers like us to add value, because you know, regardless of how much wealth you have, even the highest net worth client will always have their own insecurities about whether or not they have enough to retire.”

The benefits of a multidisciplinary firm

On top of the opportunity to provide clients with additional services there is the benefit of being able to walk a few steps down the corridor and speak to someone in the business advisory team who also manages a client’s tax affairs.

“The communication, the seamlessness of being able to go into a joint meeting, coordinate, and make it as efficient for the client as possible, without any issues around communication,” Atencia says.

Nexia also has clients that work with independent accountants.

“We have to acknowledge and appreciate that they might have an external relationship with someone else, and yes, we make it work.”

AI and cybersecurity are the biggest challenges

Technological changes is one of the greatest challenges outside regulation, according to Atencia, as it is moving very quickly, and a heavy investment in tech is going to be critical.

Cottingham says cybersecurity is also a critical issue. “We need to make sure that our clients’ data is safe and secure. And going from on-prem servers through to the cloud, there’ll be different challenges in terms of both AI and security as well.”

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s latest data breach notifications report, which covers the 2025 calendar year, had financial services, including superannuation, as the second most affected sector, with 157 notifications made to the commissioner. Most of the breaches were caused by malicious or criminal attacks.

Nexia is going through an in-depth technology review and setting its AI strategy, according to Cottingham. He says the firm is using technology to improve effectiveness and efficiency. It is specifically looking at AI to shift the historically mundane work to agents or to the cloud, “to then be able to give our people more exciting work as well, so they’re getting up through their career a lot quicker”.