TAS Is there an official list ?

[Ahralio]

Dear all,

I have a little question. I am from Nassau, Bahamas, new here. And I would like to hire an advisor...

I don't know if there is a list of the official advisors or not. In Bahamas, the government publish a list of registrant allowed to be financial advisor (or at least this is what they told me ; http://www.scb.gov.bs/documents/Firms as at 30 September 2018.pdf here is the last one).

Is there a list in Australia ? If there is one, does an advisor company have to be in that list to be genuine ?

Sorry if this is not the right place to ask or if this question looks stupid...

 

[Scruff]

As far as I know, Financial Advisors are required to be licenced in Australia. (Someone else will correct me on this if I am wrong.)

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) maintains a register of licenced advisors. If you have some names (or ABN numbers) of Financial Advisors you want to check, you can do so at the MoneySmart website which is provided by ASIC: Financial advisers register | ASIC's MoneySmart
(When checking an ABN number, enter all 11 digits without spaces. If you're new to Australia and don't know what an ABN is, it means "Australian Business Number". You will usually find it at the very bottom of Australian web pages in the footer.)

A downloadable list is available, but it's a raw dataset and probably not much use to you. If you're interested, you can download it here: ASIC – Financial Advisers Dataset - data.gov.au
(The dataset is available in CSV or XLS format and there is a comprehensive help file in PDF format.)

 

[Rob Legat - SBPL]

Financial advisors must have an AFSL (Australian Financial Services Licence), or be an authorised representative of a licensee. Search for the type of advisor you want by search engine (e.g. Google), and check to see they have an AFSL. You can then check the professional registers on the ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission) website - www.asic.gov.au. Look for professional registers on the right hand side of the page. It would be easiest to search by AFSL number.