About LicenseeFinder

LicenseeFinder is built and maintained by Managed Portfolios, a business that works with financial advisers across Australia.

The idea came from our own clients. Several advisers who use our service asked us the same thing: “Do you know any good licensees you'd recommend?” We were happy to mention a few — but we wanted to give them something more structured than a handful of names from memory. So we ran a Google search to see what was already out there, and hit the same wall anyone would: fragmented, unstructured results, with no single, reliable place to see who each licensee is, what they offer, and how they compare. So we decided to build one.

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.