Craziness Over For Some

Workloads for some financial advisers are improving after a mad first three quarters of the year with paperwork, time management issues and limited client-facing time no longer an issue for a lucky group of planners.

However compliance remains a thorn in the side of planner businesses as is still the leading encumbrance on advisers, reinforcing it as a systemic industry problem.

Interim findings from the latest CoreData Adviser Sentiment Index show managing paperwork and office procedures (54.6%), time management (40.8%) and getting sufficient client facing time (30.3%) are still big challenges for many advisers.

However these numbers are down markedly from the previous quarter when they were identified as issues by 66.3% 50.7% and 46.6% respectively.

In a way, the numbers aren’t a complete surprise as the recent profit announcements by the major banks provided some insight from that segment of the market into how busy their respective wealth management arms and therein advisers had been in the post-June 30 quarter – capping a year that has moved at break-neck speed so far.

Advisers by and large have been able to write significant new business this year against a back drop of compliance requirements, which remains one of the main challenges for around two thirds of all planners (down to 64.1% in this final quarter compared to 67.1% in the third quarter).

In the multiple option question relating to the primary challenges facing planners, the lesser issues were succession planning (13.6%), adverse press and consumer perceptions (16.0%) and managing business growth (19.4%).

Meanwhile in the single option question relating to business challenges, compliance was identified as the single most important issue for 21.8% of the 512 planners in the latest index compared to 24.1% of the 487 involved in the third quarter.

The data was collected over the week starting October 29.