Addressing the group’s AGM on Friday, Centrepoint Alliance chief executive Angus Benbow said expansion would be the group’s key focus in 2021, as it looked to take advantage of the “addressable revenue pool of about $800 million in licence fees” in the Australian advice market.
“We plan to attract more advisers to use our services, either as individuals or self-licensed firms,” Mr Benbow said.
“We are continuing to explore opportunities for industry consolidation and further acquisitions to build and enhance our services and customer base. We want to leverage our reputation for leadership and offer the very best services by tapping further into this market, allowing us to gain further scale.”
Centrepoint chairman Alan Fisher noted in his address to shareholders that the group had added almost 80 advisers over the course of the 2020 financial year, a 16 per cent increase on the previous year’s growth numbers.
“This was achieved despite a 13 per cent contraction of advisers in the market during the financial year,” Mr Fisher said.
However, Mr Benbow said the company had been badly stung by legacy complaints due to AFCA’s increased jurisdiction to handle disputes dating back to 2008, which ended in June.
“Due predominantly to an increase of $3.4 million in legacy claims in FY20, lodged ahead of the extension to AFCA’s jurisdiction closing on 30 June 2020, our net loss before tax was $2.2 million,” Mr Benbow said.
“However, the AFCA window on legacy claims is now closed and we expect that all legacy claims have now been lodged.”
Mr Benbow noted the group had seen revenue increase by 11 per cent to $131 million over the financial year, driven primarily by the increase in its adviser footprint, as well as existing advisers growing their revenue bases.
$800M is a complete exaggeration and misleading the uninformed shareholder. These guys are on a different planet. Trying to justify their over-bloated salaries and head count. All they are doing is adding huge margins to the services they offer. I was scepitcal when they bought enzumo, all they will do is jack up the fees there eventually. Why should my clients pay for that. More focused on their profits and shareholders than me or my clients.
$800 MILLION???
And we’re just ok with that, this siphoning of money from our clients pockets into those of these redundant, pointless AFSLs?
$800 million. For crying out loud.
[b]THIS IS WHY ADVICE IS SO DAMNED EXPENSIVE. [/b][b][/b]
Any proposal to ‘make advice more affordable’ without dismantling the ongoing grift that is the AFSL model is doomed to fail. It makes absolutely no sense.
Why do we have thousands of entities with their own little interpretations of the rules sitting in between advisers and the law? Each with their own (bloated) payrolls and multitudes of duplication across every element of advice.
One, centralised body that licenses and oversees ALL advisers. One set of rules, one set of guidance, one set of requirements.
Why is this such a revolutionary suggestion?
Let’s say it’s the SDB – they could charge [b]$400 million a year[/b][b][/b] and still be cheaper than this dumpster fire.
Eight. Hundred. Million. Dollars.
That’s disgusting. Every single adviser, and every single client, should be absolutely outraged by this. Red-in-the-face, desk-flipping, sweat-inducingly LIVID.
Time to empty the trough and make the snouts go and earn their keep, instead of piggybacking off our work and our clients.
What about the lookback program?
The adviser / licensee model is broken. It is crazy that there are two parties that are equally and fully liable for advice and one party, the licensee, legally owns the clients and has full power over the adviser.
It just asks for predatory compliance where a licensee gets more and more tempted to remove clients from the adviser for more and more tenuous reasons in order to survive an ASIC audit. It makes little sense for an adviser to give all power to somebody with such a different set of incentives.