About LicenseeFinder

Much of the focus in Australian financial services is on helping consumers find the right financial adviser. And rightly so. It is one of the most important decisions a consumer can make.

But for financial advisers, there's an equally important decision that gets far less attention: choosing the right AFS Licensee.

An adviser's licensee determines which products they can recommend, which platforms they can use, what compliance obligations they carry, and ultimately how well they can serve their clients. AFS Licensees hold enormous influence over the advice landscape. Yet there is almost no infrastructure to help advisers make an informed choice about who they're licensed under.

Today, an adviser looking for a new licensee has limited options. Word-of-mouth referrals are limited in breadth, a Google search returns fragmented, unstructured results, and the sites that do capture some of the relevant data are incomplete for this purpose and may sit behind a paywall. None of these options give a clear picture of what each licensee actually offers: their technology, services, authorisation model, or how they compare on the things that matter most.