Major changes in the licensee and financial advice landscape over the past two to three years has prompted CoreData to re-think how it approaches its Licensee Research project.

The researcher has retained former GPS Wealth head Grahame Evans as a senior consultant to spearhead the initiative for 2023 and is seeking feedback from professional advisers.

Evans tells Professional Planner this year it will include self-licensed financial advice firms and, for the first time, include a section dedicated specifically to licensees themselves to help gauge the health and sustainability of licensee business models. But he says its core focus on advisers, their businesses and their clients will remain unchanged.

Evans says the advice market is settling into three main groupings – Insignia and AMP at the institutional level; an enlarged mid-tier, non-institutional group; and an ever-growing smaller group that has grown for two key reasons.

“One is the closing down at the major institutional businesses,” he says.