Royal commission may drive self-licensing spike

Speaking to ifa, Centrepoint national growth manager Ryan Goodfellow said the media narrative around the royal commission into banking, superannuation and financial services may drive more advisers to self-licence.

“[The] royal commission will see more and more businesses considering what their options could be,” he said.

“It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the media with regards to that, and what impact that has on consumer sentiment and if it drives more AFSL applications because practices don’t want to be associated with the large institutions.”

Mr Goodfellow, who formerly held advice and manager positions within the Westpac group, compared the royal commission to his previous experiences working with larger financial institutions.

“I’ve worked in large institutions before during times when they’ve had a lot of poor publicity and media, and it has impacted directly on practices’ decisions to come across to the group, and that’s because of conversations they’re having with their clients as well,” he said.

Additionally, the rise of managed accounts could drive larger practices to look into self-licensing.

“Larger practices that may have $200-250 million in FUM, they’re starting to think about how they can position themselves or their business as having an in-house investment solution,” Mr Goodfellow said.

“The likes of SMAs, MDAs and all that, and that seems to be a bit of a driver there for these practices to go out and build that, because they can bring in another revenue line into the business.”