‘Demand for advice is strong’, says MLC

In a presentation at the ifa Business Strategy Day in Sydney, MLC general manager of wealth distribution, Geoff Rogers, spoke of his research done in collaboration with Investment Trends last year.

For that research, Mr Rogers interviewed a sample of more than 2,000 consumers that could be viewed as substantive enough to apply across the whole Australian population.

He found that even during the Hayne royal commission, 2.1 million adult Australians were considering getting advice in the next two years, which was up 31 per cent on 2017.

“The demand for advice is strong, but there's a contrary trend to this as well. There are actually 1.9 million Australians getting advice right now and 200,000 of those were considering leaving their planner, in that year alone, for all sorts of reasons,” Mr Rogers said.

Mr Rogers argued that an environment exists for financial advice to thrive in Australia, pointing to the strength of the superannuation system even as it goes through a transitional period.

He said that the super system in 2017 was worth $2.3 trillion and that, in 10 years’ time, it will be worth $4.02 trillion.

“That's just the superannuation system. That's not all advanced, and I know that there's a standard amount of advice that's given outside of super as well,” Mr Rogers said.

“If we are going through a period in transition and change, we're going so into a system that is strong.”

Adrian Flores

Adrian Flores is a deputy editor at Momentum Media, focusing mainly on banking, wealth management and financial services. He has also written for Public Accountant, Accountants Daily and The CEO Magazine.

You can contact him on [email protected].