Adviser groups have been hard at work helping their members through the upheaval of the past several years, and, according to one dealer group, one of the toughest changes for small brokerages was going from being an ‘agent’ to a business owner - something which has meant a lot of reorganisation for many.

Dealer group MySolutions has been active in the market for around 20 years, and was formerly a part of fellow dealer group Kepa. Commenting on the help that it has offered its members over the past 18 months, CEO Kevin Smee said that a lot of advisers had to “take their businesses apart” and work out how they would fit into the new financial advice world, and many have been turning to the leaders and AFAs within their dealer groups for assistance.

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“We’ve been in this particular space of training advisers for 20-odd years, and we have a long breadth of history and experience in the market,” Smee said.

“I think the advisers have had to deal with a lot of change over quite a long period of time now. There has been new legislation and changes to regulation, and they’ve essentially had to pull their businesses apart and put them back together.”

“Traditionally, most of the businesses in this space have been ‘agents’ rather than business owners, and so they’ve all had to look at their processes and do some work on their business,” he explained.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done - getting a transitional license was easy, but getting a full license is going to be a lot more difficult. The AFAs in the groups have probably had it a bit easier, but the RFAs - which is where most of the risk and insurance advisers were - didn’t have all those same requirements.”

Smee said that most advisers have faced something of a learning curve, and it has been steeper for some businesses than others. He said MySolutions’ primary goal has been to guide its members through that process, while still offering the negotiation and policy value that an adviser expects from a dealer group.

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“Our group covers many areas of financial advice. We have insurance advisers, financial planners and mortgage brokers under our umbrella, and we also deal with risk advisers,” Smee said.

“We have access to a number of policies that are not available in the general insurance market, particularly in the group space. We have some specially negotiated terms with insurers, and we have been involved in advisory business development for a long period of time.

“These are all areas where we’re really trying to help our members out.”