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Analysis of Financial Network Performance For 2010

While it would be impossible to deny that 2010 has been a difficult year for Financial Services, although some will try.  It is equally fair to say that it has been an extremely difficult year for most other professions since the ongoing über cautious attitude of banks to both commercial and personal lending is still, very much acting as a brake on the countries attempts to throw off the recession.   This fact is evident to such an extent that you can’t occasionally help wondering if governments both present and past are not guilty of giving out one message to the public and another to the banks.  Certainly they are forever talking about their efforts to persuade the banks to lend more, but even thought they “we” now own a large proportion of British Banking, this still seems to fall on deaf ears.

Against this background it is hardly surprising that an industry which literally lives on the commissions generated by borrowing and investment along with associated insurances is generally struggling, although again not in all cases with 2010 producing our biggest client so far in monetary terms. Comparing the numbers with data from 2009, it seems as though almost 1,000 AR’s have left the industry.  Things are not necessarily this simple however as many brokers who were previously AR’s in their own right have decided to join other firms as RI’s in order to reduce their costs or in some cases possibly to pick up some additional work from them.

The table referred to by this article gives performance figures for the whole year rather than just last quarter, in order to present a roundup of how things are moving and not just a snapshot.  The information is accurate according to the FSA register on Wednesday 5th January, with the usual caveats regarding the occasional issues from this source.

Unsurprisingly the big three names which dominated the table thorough 2010 are still there but with all three showing big reductions in AR numbers.  Proving as ever that size might be important, but certainly isn’t the main feature of a successful network.  Pink and BDS are the other notable casualties of the year, recently purchased by LSL they have still managed to lose some 130 AR’s which equates to over 25% of their AR base.  This was principally due to speculation and worry about the fate of the network once it became known that the Skipton were looking to dispose of it, along with a natural exit of brokers, some of them part time whose businesses were no longer viable with increased fees which were introduced in 2010.

Julian Harris appeared to do very well in hoovering up AR’s following the demise of Mortgage Times (Vision) in February.  Although it remains to be seen if this was a good long term strategy as low productivity from its AR’s was a major problem for vision.

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