The past year has been characterised by greater disruption to financial advisers’ businesses, and a greater need for clear and effective leadership by licensees, than ever before. Through the turmoil of 2020-21 a select group of licensees has distinguished itself in the eyes of financial advisers, and these licensees are set to be recognised in the 2021 CoreData Licensee of the Year Awards.

Today we announce the finalists.

The awards are based on advisers’ opinions and ratings of services offered by licensees, collected in the course of CoreData’s landmark Licensee Research, and on other research conducted by CoreData during the past year.

The Licensee Research reflects advisers’ satisfaction with elements of their licensee’s offer, how well their licensees have supported them through industry change, and the quality of the licensee’s leadership.

Who were the 2020 winners? Refresh your memory here

CoreData has traditionally classified licensees according to ownership: institutionally branded, institutionally affiliated, and independently owned. But the changing make-up of the licensee industry has seen the classifications change in 2021 to one based on the size of licensee:

Top: Licensees that are part of a group that has an aggregate of 500 or more advisers authorised on its licences
Large: Licensees that are part of a group that has between 100 and 499 advisers authorised on its licences.
Medium: A licensee that is part of a group that has 10 to 99 advisers authorised on its licences.
Small: A licensee that is part of a group that has two to nine advisers authorised on its licences.
Single: Licensees that have a sole authorised representative.

To illustrate an example of how the restructuring alters the classification of licensees, a licensee such as AMP Financial Planning shifts from the institutionally branded category to the Top Tier, where it sits with other licensees that are part of groups that have more than 500 advisers on their licences.

To qualify for inclusion in the Licensee of the Year Awards, licensees required at least 20 of their advisers to complete the Licensee Research.

2021 CoreData Licensee of the Year Award – Finalists
Listed alphabetically by licensee

Top Tier Licensees

GPS Wealth
Millennium3
RI Advice

Large Licensees

Affinia
Lifespan
Matrix

Medium Licensees

Fitzpatricks
Madison
(Two Medium-Tier licensees qualified in 2021)

There are no finalists in the Small and Single licensee tiers due to
the limited numbers of responses received for individual licensees in these tiers

Licensee Leadership Award

Marcus O’Sullivan – Affinia
Eugene Ardino – Lifespan
Allison Dummett – Matrix

Industry Leadership Award
TBA – presented at CoreData’s discretion

The winners of the LotY awards and the Industry Leadership Award will be announced next week, here on the New Model Adviser website. An article revealing the winners will be published at 11.00am on Tuesday August 24.