With huge thanks to the fabulous Lifespan adviser community and team, we’re honoured to announce Lifespan Financial Planning as winners of the 2021 Core Data Licensee of the Year Award, in addition to the Large-Tier Licensee of the Year and Eugene Ardino, as winner of the Licensee Leadership Award.
The CoreData 2021 Licensee of the Year Awards are based on the opinions and views of financial advisers themselves. The Awards reflect advisers’ satisfaction with their licensees. CoreData’s Licensee Research forms the basis of the awards, and it takes the form of an online survey of about 100 questions, covering myriad aspects of licensee offers and licensee leadership.
In 2021 a total of 675 advisers from more than 50 licensees completed the research, generating around 70,000 data points. The depth of this research allows CoreData to contact detailed analysis of adviser satisfaction and to calculate overall satisfaction scores. As CoreData reported, in 2021 it was clear that factors beyond the functional licensing role of the licensee made the difference to adviser satisfaction.
Licensee leadership was a closer focus of attention in the 2021 awards. There are now more than a dozen aspects of the quality, suitability and competence of leadership included in the Licensee Research, and how advisers responded to these questions for the basis of the Licensee Leadership award.
CoreData has traditionally classified licensees according to ownership: institutionally branded, institutionally affiliated, and independently owned. But the changing make-up of the licensee industry led to a change in 2021 to a classification approach based on the size of licensee:
- Top Tier: A licensee that is part of a group or parent entity that has 500 or more authorised representatives in total authorised on its licences.
- Large Tier: A licensee that is part of a group or parent entity that has between 100 and 499 advisers in total authorised on its licences.
- Medium Tier: A licensee that is part of a group or parent entity that has 10 to 100 advisers in total authorised on its licences.
- Small Tier: A licensee that is part of a group or parent entity that has two to nine advisers in total authorised on its licences.
- Single: Licensees that have a sole authorised representative.
