Elixir Consulting is working with roughly four times the number of advisers it was working with at this time last year, the independent consultancy for the financial planning sector has reported.
Elixir Consulting managing director Sue Viskovic said while the group had predominantly only worked with individual financial planning practices in the past, a number of enquiries had started to come in from dealer groups as well.
“Last year we were only working with Australian Financial Services, where as now we’ve almost completed a fully comprehensive program for one of the other large licensees and are talking to half a dozen more about developing courses and or facilitating workshops for their member firms,” Viskovic said.
“I think more and more dealer groups are seeing the need for a coordinated approach to the future of financial planning, particularly in light of current industry reforms, and see that external consultants can also support in-house resources as required.”
She said the big items practices wanted assistance with were transitioning to fee-for-service, creating better service packages, marketing and new client generation, practice functionality, and succession and general business planning.
“I think dealer groups are also feeling more pressure in terms of providing value to their advisers, particularly as most licensees have set themselves strong recruitment targets and don’t want to lose advisers due to lack of support,” she said.
“Dealer groups are most likely putting more concentration on ensuring that they’re running profitable operations as well, as the potential removal of things like volume bonuses paid by platform providers will no doubt have some flow-on effect.”
Last month, another industry consultancy firm, Business Health, also reported a 50 per cent spike over a six-month period in enquiries from dealer groups interested in running tailored practice development programs.
