Garnering much interest from Riskinfo readers this week was our story on the financial advice sector finishing the 2022-2023 financial year with significantly fewer advisers…
The financial advice industry finished the 2022-2023 financial year with nearly 600 fewer advisers than at the start of year, according to Wealth Data.
The firm’s Colin Williams says in his weekly Financial Adviser Insights that the financial year started with 16,183 advisers and closed out at 15,584, a fall of 3.70% or 599 advisers.
Williams says for perspective, the previous financial year was down by 2,763 advisers or 14.58%.
He notes too that the data should be seen a preliminary as not all licensees would have updated their data as they have 30 days to report.
For the 2022-23 financial year 125 new licensees commenced and 88 closed. In Wealth Data’s Financial Planning business model, it was 102 new licensees and 51 closed.
Williams puts the number of “new entrants and current’ at 373, while 1,429 advisers were ‘resigned and ceased’.
“The balance of 457 advisers, between new entrants, ceased advisers and the negative loss of 599, is made up of advisers coming back into advice.”
He says an alternate way to view the loss “…is to take away the new entrants, and this would see a net loss of 972 (599 plus 373) experienced advisers.”
It is an enigma to calculate and formulate Advisers as mere numbers.
An experienced Adviser who has decades of providing advice, based on real world analysis, watching and learning from all the gains and losses that is synonymous with working with clients and market participants, is not the same as a new kid on the block who has learned from a course, has little actual experience and has not been there as an active participant in clients lives and the foibles of economic hocus pocus.
Only a theorist can take numbers and make them seem to be something they are not.
As Stalin said, one death is tragic, a million deaths is a statistic.
The most evil mass murderer in the history of the world, understood this play on words.
It is a shame that many theorists that publish numbers today, have little understanding of the REAL WORLD implications of experienced Advisers walking away.
Well said as usual Jeremy. Another factor here, about which I am always harping, is that the article author or quoted source doesn’t qualify ‘which’ advisers – risk specialist or investment adviser or holistic. OK, pretty hard to get those stats but if they want to do an article on important ‘stats’ they’ve got to arrive at the party with ALL the stats.
These are important delineations, the type of adviser. As we all know, there’s a very different discipline between a risk specialist and an investment adviser. Different skill sets and qualifications in a real world too. A truly holistic adviser (how many are there anyway?) is a grey area between but risk and investment is one or the other. Are we to assume the sources that quote such opaque numbers are so dumb they don’t know the difference or that they’re leaving these details out on purpose. Either way they should pull their heads in and get back in their box if they can’t give the whole accurate story. I’m sure that readers of RiskInfo would like to see the stats specifically on RISK advisers.
I for one can’t see pure risk specialists, en masse, being around after 2026. The exams/formal qualifications offered simply don’t have much relevance to them and, anyway, commissions aren’t high enough to make the smart or good ones stay or bring new ones in.
Super funds, tragically, will reign supreme in what is left of the risk ‘advice’ space. What will be fascinating, in a sort of maudlin way, will be to watch what will become of the life companies without the throughput of all the previously prolific new business writing experienced risk specialists because gone they will be.
Comments are closed.