That is not a demand problem. Demand has never been higher. It is that advice practices still grow on referral from people they already know, and 81 per cent of new business arrives that way. I build the other engine: written to ASIC RG 234 as it stands today, measured at every step, and owned outright by the practice.
Adviser numbers fell from 28,900 at the end of 2018 to around 15,100 by March 2026. Roughly 500 new entrants arrived in 2024 against 700 to 1,000 leaving each year, and the register is forecast to keep drifting down to about 14,796 by 2030.
On the other side, Investment Trends counted 15.9 million Australian adults with unmet advice needs. Divide one by the other and every remaining adviser has around 240 people who need what they do.
So the constraint was never demand. It is that a practice with 240 people looking for it has no way of being found by the right ones, and no way of turning away the wrong ones without spending an adviser's afternoon doing it.
Ask an adviser what makes their practice different and a large share will reach for the same word. Corporations Act s923A makes it an offence to use it unless the practice passes every limb of a test most cannot pass.
"a reference to a restricted word or expression is a reference to: (i) the word independent, impartial or unbiased; or (ii) any other word or expression specified in the regulations; or (iii) any other word or expression (whether or not in English) that is of like import to a word or expression covered by any of the previous subparagraphs."Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), section 923A
Where practices get caught:
Read that list again and notice what it means commercially. The most obvious point of difference in this profession is legally unavailable to most of the profession, in a market where 81 per cent of new business already comes from who you happen to know.
Which is exactly why positioning is the first piece of work rather than an afterthought. If you cannot say the easy thing, you have to be specific about the true thing, and specific is what gets cited anyway.
None of this is legal or compliance advice, and your licensee remains responsible for approving your material. It is a description of the constraints I write inside.
Advisers manage an average of 110 ongoing clients and say they would like to serve 152. That gap is 42 clients, and it is the entire brief. Not a bigger funnel, a better filter.
The profession has already worked this out. Adviser Ratings found 57 per cent of practices target specific client types while 28 per cent accept any client who arrives. What almost none of them have is a system that does the targeting, because targeting by hand means an adviser spending an afternoon on a first meeting that should never have been booked.
So the enquiry is qualified before it reaches an adviser: on the advice need, on whether the fee model fits, and on whether this is a person the practice can genuinely serve well. The report shows how many were filtered out, not only how many came in.
Existing clients bring 81 per cent of new business. Accountants bring 45 per cent. Digital brings 19 per cent, which is both the smallest channel and the emptiest one. The practices that show up there are not fighting anybody for the space.
Then Recommend feeds Attract, and the channel that already produces 81 per cent of your new business starts being fed on purpose rather than by luck.
Financial advisers in Australia are not banned from using testimonials, unlike health practitioners. Adviser Ratings has run a public review platform for this profession for over a decade. So reviews are available, and they are the single strongest signal a prospect can find on a practice they have never met.
What almost nobody in this market knows is how the burden of proof works.
"For the purposes of applying subsection (1) in relation to a proceeding concerning a representation of a kind referred to in paragraph (1)(c) or (d), the representation is taken to be misleading unless evidence is adduced to the contrary."Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth), section 12DB
Paragraphs (1)(c) and (d) are the testimonial paragraphs. For testimonials alone, the onus reverses. Every other kind of claim in s12DB has to be shown to be misleading. A testimonial is taken to be misleading unless the practice produces evidence that it is not, and a contravention of s12DB(1) is a strict liability offence.
Two more rules stack on top of it:
Which is why a generic review widget cannot be dropped onto an advice practice's website. What this needs is monitoring, screening for outcome and return language, a written moderation policy, an audit trail of what was known and when, and a licensee approval step. That is a build, not a plugin, and it is the reason the Recommend stage on this page looks different from every other version of it on this site.
None of this is legal or compliance advice. Your licensee approves your material and remains responsible for it.
You spend your working life telling clients not to hold their most valuable asset inside a structure someone else controls.
You assess claims for a living, so here is the position stated plainly. What exists is Norde Homes, a Perth home builder. Different industry, same mechanism: absent from AI answers, now named in them for the high-intent searches its buyers run. Roughly three qualified enquiries a week, and AI-assistant referral traffic up 140 per cent quarter on quarter.
Two qualifications you would put on it yourself. AI answers are not deterministic and vary between runs, so it is a position held rather than a ranking owned. And it is evidence the mechanism works, not evidence it works for advice practices. Cross-industry proof is the accurate description.
The stronger evidence takes about a minute and is about your practice rather than mine. The AI Scan runs a live web search and reports whether your practice is findable and citable for the questions prospective clients ask, across four factors. It does not put a question to ChatGPT and report the answer. Free, no pitch. If it returns solid on all four, you have no need of me.
I would rather you tested the claim than took it. That is why the front door is a diagnostic and not a brochure.
Arnoud Gernaat, Growth RebelsThe right-hand column is the honest one. Read it before booking anything, since a wasted call costs us both the same half hour.
There is no way to price this properly without understanding your client profile, your fee model and what an ongoing client is worth over the years you keep them. So the first step is a free thirty-minute call.
Most advice practices need an Engine build rather than the entry one, because of how their client decides. Someone choosing an adviser is handing over the thing they are most anxious about, cannot judge the quality of the advice in advance, and often takes months. That buyer has to be reassured before they book, and the reassurance is what the extra machine does.
Pricing is published on the site, because you should not have to sit through a call to find out what something costs.
Yes. There is no statutory ban on testimonials for financial advisers in Australia, unlike health practitioners. But ASIC Act s12DB(1A) reverses the onus of proof for testimonials specifically: the representation is taken to be misleading unless evidence is adduced to the contrary. So you must be able to prove each review is genuine. RG 234.130 requires testimonials to be attributed and authentic, and RG 234.187 makes you responsible for any third-party review on your own site from the moment you become aware of it. A review engine for this sector needs monitoring, a documented moderation policy and an audit trail.
Only if the practice satisfies every limb of Corporations Act s923A(2), which requires receiving no commissions, no volume-based remuneration and no influencing benefits, operating free from product restrictions and without relevant conflicts. ASIC has confirmed that "independently owned" and "non-aligned" are caught as expressions of like import. Most practices cannot meet the test, and s942B(2)(fa) then requires them to publish a statement that they are not independent and explain why. s923A(4) makes it a continuing offence, so every day the words remain on a website is a separate offence.
Most practices in this position do not need more enquiries. They need better-matched ones. Adviser Ratings found 57 per cent of practices target specific client types while 28 per cent accept any client, and Colonial First State found advisers manage an average of 110 ongoing clients while aspiring to serve 152. A system that qualifies on fee capacity, advice need and suitability before an adviser sees the enquiry turns a capacity problem into a selection problem.
Yes, where the content constitutes general advice. Corporations Act s949A(3) requires the warning to be given at the same time as the advice is provided and by the same means as the advice is provided. A warning sitting in a website footer or behind a link does not satisfy that when the content is a social post, a carousel or a video. RG 234.36 separately confirms that a link or QR code is not sufficient to correct a misleading headline claim.
You cannot buy the network, and you are not allowed to call yourself independent. You can build the engine. Book a free thirty-minute call and we will work out what your practice's growth actually depends on today.
A straight conversation, not a pitch. No prepared deck.