Privately-owned national advice firm, Fitzpatricks Private Wealth, believes the New Year is shaping up as a watershed for the movement of high quality financial advisers into licensing arrangements better suited to objective based advice outcomes for clients.

Fitzpatricks was a pioneer of fee-based advice services, and has long held objectives based advice as a fundamental key to enriching the lives of its clients.

CEO John McMurdo said a combination of culture and values ‘centred firmly on our client-first principles’ had seen over 150 unique expressions of interest made by external adviser businesses to his firm last financial year.

“That is in itself an interesting number. But perhaps more telling from our experience is a consistent desire by those advisers to align with licensee groups that offer the opportunity to more deeply explore the opportunities of the objective-based advice route,” he said.

Mr McMurdo said the market was currently saturated with the views of commentators seeking to analyse an ‘inflection point’ facing the various underlying business models within Australia’s licensee brands.

“We can say with great certainty that a significant number of advisers are indeed weighing up their options, just as the institutionally-owned groups have begun making major decisions regarding their future operating models.”

This year, 11 new advice practices have joined Fitzpatricks, with another 10 advice practices in the process of transitioning over coming months.

“As always, Fitzpatricks will assess the merit of each advice practice we engage with. Cultural fit is paramount; we will continue to be extremely selective with the advisers who approach us. Indeed as part of our process, it is existing advisers who make the final decision on who is admitted. That results in our firm turning away many more advisers than those that apply, but importantly, it does mean we protect our culture as one of Australia’s leading advice firms,” he said.

Expressions of interest have also been received from Practices who are self-licensed but wish to partner with Fitzpatricks. This includes advisers who desire to maintain their own AFSL, but want to be part of a larger Group of like-minded advisers, pursuing client centric, objectives based advice and business models. This includes tapping into the back office support, sharing ideas and mentoring services offered by Fitzpatricks. As part of Fitzpatricks’ objective to help a true profession emerge in advice, Fitzpatricks has been willing to selectively support other culturally aligned groups.

Mr McMurdo said “Fitzpatricks continues to explore new models to support advice practices and advisers who desire to provide objective based outcomes for clients. All of the advisers associated with Fitzpatricks share our goal to enrich clients’ lives”.