The return of big planning firms

There are still some large risk-based groups but he said almost all the big investment players had disappeared. The industry had been smashed by the financial markets for two or three years, then regulation for another two or three years, he said, so practices had shrunk and any growth plans had been put on hold.

“In the advisory industry generally, there are very few who have had the time or the space to work on their outward-facing proposition because they have been so preoccupied with looking after their existing clients and meeting all the regulatory requirements.”

But he said there were not enough advisers to cater for New Zealanders’ KiwiSaver needs. Overseas experience showed that, left to make their own decisions, most people would not make good ones. “Investor returns will be different to investment returns and that is due to behaviour. It will cost them dearly.”

He said investors needed to be given the opportunity to access advice when they wanted it, in the form they wanted.  “The challenge to the industry is to define advice not in the way they want to deliver it but how the client wants to receive it.”