Bank AFA force broadly steady

New Zealand banks are bucking international trends by holding on to their advice forces.

Tuesday, December 18th 2018, 6:00AM

While others around the world are increasingly spinning off their wealth management businesses, New Zealand numbers remain firm.

In Australia, Westpac is considering selling its financial planning arm. A spokesman for Westpac in New Zealand said it used a different model here and had no plans to make any immediate changes.

CBA, parent of ASB, revealed in June a demerger including its wealth management and mortgage broking businesses.

NAB has outlined plans to sell MLC and ANZ is selling much of its planning business to IOOF.

In New Zealand, ASB now has 40 AFAs, from 44 last year.

BNZ has 60, down from 65 last year.

ANZ has 121, up from 116 last year.

ASB general manager of wealth Jonathan Beale, said the drop in numbers was due to tweaks to its model and people leaving and not needing to be replaced.

He recently returned from a trip to the UK, in which he talked to NatWest about its financial advice arm. It went from having 350 advisers to having none and was now pondering how to unwind that decision.

ASB is moving to a new structure in which new financial advice clients will be acquired by a team that will look after them for a year.

They will then be passed to wealth management advisers whose job it will be to manage the relationship.

"That role will be to make sure they get the service they need."

Beale said FSLAB would make little difference to bank AFA forces because they were already operating under strict regulations.

But it would mean more of a change for RFAs and QFE advisers. Banks would have questions to work through in regard to how they applied for and used a FAP licence under the new regime.

Beale said it was still tough to find good advisers. ASB has hired two new AFAs over recent months but both had come from other parts of the bank.

Tags: AFA ASB