One of the phrases that’s been really troubling us here at CoreData for the past few months is “when the market returns to normal”.

We’ve been hearing it a lot from planners, mortgage brokers, wealth managers, private bankers, and stockbrokers.

Here’s what they’ve been telling us:

* “When the market returns to normal the business will be OK”
* “When the market returns to normal I will be better at selling product”
* “When the market returns to normal I’ll start calling clients again”
* “A few years ago we were getting about two new clients a week – just coming in. Now we are lucky to see two a month. When the market returns to normal they will be back.”
* “When the market returns to normal, I’ll have the time to work on my business”
* “When the market returns to normal my clients will be happier”
* “When the market returns to normal – this structure will work, we just have to wait.

It’s easy to understand what’s going on here. For a lot of people in the financial services industry for a long time, life has been very good. They have been able to make a good living from a system which supported them well in a market which was totally benign and it would be wonderful if that happened again.

Here’s the really bad news. The market will never return to ‘normal’. The future will be very different from the past and no amount of wishing will make it so.

It’s time to change and unless you want to change, it’s time to get out of the industry.

Some of the changes are really obvious: the legislated change – for example, FOFA; the choppiness of a post-Keynesian market; and the fear which is stalking the consumers.

But what’s more pervasive, more subtle, are the changes which are almost unstated. A Government which is focused on income distribution, not creation, a Government which believes in big super and most importantly the 30% of mass affluent Australians who purchased financial services no longer really understand how a planner is going to help them and that’s a critical issue for the industry.

For the past two years, we’ve run focus group after focus group and survey after survey and the news for the industry has been both good and bad.

It’s been good because the data is clear – people want a planner, they want someone to talk to, to guide them and provide structure.

It’s bad because they don’t believe that the industry as it currently stands can deliver what they need.

So here’s the big question. Which business, which distribution business, platform business or investment business is going to break ranks?

Which one is going to make an effort to reinvent themselves and do it quickly?

Which one of them is going to invest in market leadership, not just relabeling fees, tinkering at the edges and mucking about with structure?

G.K. Chesterton said that the world owes all its development to the unreasonable man, the person who doesn’t accept things as they are – the man who never expects the past to return.

Surely that’s the kind of leadership this industry is looking for and at the moment it’s hard to identify.