Hakes is fresh from having toured 10 regions of NZ getting to know members of his organisation on the ground following his taking the reins of the organisation at the annual conference in March.
Hakes says he had “no presentations, no agenda – no hidden agenda,” but had wanted to listen to what members had to say and their current situations.
“It's helped inform our thinking as to what are the strategic priorities for FANZ,” he says.
Hakes has a webinar planned for Wednesday, June 19 at which he and Cecilia Farrow will discuss the evolution of FANZ's professional development framework
“There's positivity out there. A lot of financial advisers' time over the last couple of years has been internally focused with their business and implementing new regulations,” Hakes told GoodReturns.
Members had been focused on obtaining the now obligatory Level 5 of the NZ Certificate in Financial Services, building the appropriate processes into their businesses to ensure compliance with professional standards, he says.
With much of that work now behind them, advisers are now looking at how to build demand for quality financial advice.
Hakes also wants the NZ financial advice community to benchmark itself against how the industry operates in other countries.
“Compared to some markets, the ingredients we have here are overwhelmingly positive. There's a lot of good ingredients that exist here in NZ” that should enable the industry to thrive, Hakes says.
The new education standards act as a barrier to entry and that's positive, he says.
“Most advisers have gotten over that minimum.”
New minimum education standard
Hakes notes that when Australia implemented similar education standards there had been a significant contraction in the number of advisers but that doesn't appear to have happened to the same exent in NZ.
Since the level 5 requirement came into force in March last year, the number of licenced financial advice providers (FAPs) has increased to 1,466 from 1,360 in March last year. The number of licenced advisers is much greater because FAPs range from sole providers to entities with 500 or more advisers.
“There's no doubt that the industry is reflective of our population of advisers making retirement decisions,” Hake says. “If they don't see a future for themselves and their business, they can bring the retirement date forward, but that has knock-on effects” in that the number of consumers wanting to access financial advice is growing.
In The Mortgage Mag's most recent annual survey of readers, only 41% of respondents said they belonged to FANZ, down from 45% a year earlier and from nearly 60% in 2019 when FANZ, an amalgam of three former associations, was formed.
But Hakes clearly isn't ready to cut mortgage advisers loose to join rival Australia-based organisation, Finance and Mortgage Advisers Association of New Zealand (FAMNZ), which recently opened for business with former FANZ staffer Leigh Hodgetts as its country manager.
“We're an adviser representative body across the broad spectrum of advice,” Hakes says, noting FANZ has done a lot of work recently in responding to the Commerce Commission's draft report on banking competition which accused advisers of chasing commissions.
Comments at the ComCom's subsequent consultation conference showed “that there was a deeper understanding and awareness” of how mortgage advisers operate and ComCom has been “receptive” during the industry's consultation with it, he says.
ComCom's final report is due by Aug 20.
