The latest research into practice management has shown financial advisers are significantly underestimating the effort they allocate to non-advice operations.
Specifically, the “Elemnta-Marshan Consulting 2025 Adviser Efficiency Analysis” found advice practices estimate around 45 per cent of their effort goes into non-advice operations, such as implementation, compliance and administration work, when the real figure is closer to 86 per cent, revealing a 41 percentage point perception gap in time allocation.
“The perception gap itself is alarming (the gap between what practices think they spend on administration, compliance and implementation and the reality). Interim data shows a clear trend towards advisers either overcompensating for, or grossly underestimating, the drain of time from non-advice effort. This underscores why some advice businesses are barely profitable – if at all,” Elemnta chief executive Shaun Green noted.
The study suggested a 41 percentage point perception gap prevented financial planners from accurately pricing their services and managing their real workload. It also indicated many practices struggled to make ends meet and remain profitable.
“The early results confirm that inefficiency has quietly become the largest cost centre in advice as firms face far greater profit and practice burdens than we first thought,” Green said.
The research also revealed a significant difference in efficiency between some product types, with the employment of modern platforms costing practices an average of $760 per application, while use of industry funds incurs an average cost of $1645 per application.
The time difference for the different products was also significant, with modern platform applications taking an average eight hours and 25 minutes to complete, with a rejection rate of 12 per cent to 18 per cent, and industry fund applications taking an average 17 hours and 20 minutes, with a rejection rate of 30 per cent to 35 per cent.
“These early figures are a confronting set of numbers and we felt it necessary to release them now to begin focusing the entire advice ecosystem on understanding the impacts and prioritising solutions for its collective immediate benefit,” Green noted.
The full report will be released in early 2026.
