I’m an advisor, get me out of here!

Clients need financial planning now more than ever and Independent financial advisors are still best placed to assist clients with fulfilling their financial objectives 
 
Despite this we are starting to see an increase in advisors leaving the market. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this such as mergers, retirements and unfortunately business failures, however when we looked at the Central Banks Annual report published in April we were surprised at number of revocations in 2012 versus the number of new authorisations.

2012

The report also highlighted that of the 797 revoked licences, 191 related to tied insurance intermediaries.  
 
At the start of this year there were  1: 1389  advisors per head of ROI population. Interestingly when you compare this to the UK market and CF30 Authorised Advisors the figure is 1:2265. Despite this figure over 1100 UK advisors left the market in the last 18 months,  RDR has been cited as the biggest influencing factor.
 
The US is seeing a similar trend in that the advice market is contracting at -2.3% per annum.
 
Unfortunately we don’t have a crystal ball but It’s reasonable to project that numbers in Ireland will continue to contract particularly if we adopt a version of the UKs regulatory framework.  It is also reasonable to predict that those  those who opt to stay in the market will have to adapt to a changing industry but the question id like to pose to the readers of our blog is .. “ Do you think that the Irish public will benefit from less advice in the market?”

Written by Michael Keyes.

_{*Please note this content is the view of the author and not of Independent Trustee Company}