Financial advisers specialising in self-managed superannuation funds (SMSF) are more advanced in their progress to fixed-price fee-for-service than are generalist SMSF advice firms.
Researcher Investment Trends found specialists (those with 20 or more SMSF clients) are 50 per cent further along the curve, chief operating officer Eric Blewitt said.
"In keeping with wider research from Investment Trends, more profitable practices tend to have a greater propensity to have recently seen an SMSF client and also likely to have fewer clients," Blewitt said.
King Loong Choi, an analyst with the researcher, said net profit from fixed-price fee-for-service for SMSF specialists was 21 per cent of revenue.
This contrasted with net profit of 13 per cent of revenue for generalists in the fixed-price fee-for-service segment.
Blewitt and Choi were speaking about overall trends that had become evident after three surveys of the SMSF space this year: investors' behaviours, planners' intentions and planners' business models.
"The more profitable SMSF specialists tend to be outsourcing," Blewitt said.
"In paraplanning, compliance and operational risk areas, outsourcing allows a lower cost of delivery and a focus on core capabilities."
Choi said the generalist SMSF firms were tending to derive 29 per cent of their revenue from fee-for-service and 22 per cent from commissions, whereas the specialists in SMSFs were deriving 36 per cent from fee-for-service and only 10 per cent from commissions.
Generalists' funds under advice (FUA) from SMSFs had dropped from 23 per cent in 2011 to 19 per cent in 2012. For specialists, though, FUA from SMSFs had grown from 46 per cent last year to 50 per cent this year.
"This shows they can demonstrate the value proposition and they have a mechanism that suits SMSFs," Blewitt said.
While the generalists' trend was to holistic advice and charging on overall assets under advice, the specialists were "filling the advice gaps and charging for specific pieces of advice", he said.
Within the SMSF space, there was a build-up of cash and cash-like funds now totalling $133 billion, Choi said, and of that $50 billion was described as "excess cash due to market volatility".
Investors had moved away from managed funds to allocations that were "safer havens with security, yield and transparency", he said.
Contrasting May 2007 with April 2012, he said allocations had grown in cash (from 13 per cent to 28 per cent) and in exchange-traded funds (from near zero to 2 per cent).
In the same period, allocations had fallen in managed funds (from 11 per cent to 6 per cent) and in property, both investment and commercial (from 18 per cent to 14 per cent).
