A recent report by Melville Jessup Weaver, commissioned by the Financial Services Council, suggested cutting upfront commissions from up to 200% to 50%. It said commission structures were driving behaviour that disadvantaged consumers and added cost to the industry.

Mike Moore, who runs a marketing company that helps advisers buy, sell and develop their businesses, said new advisers were not earning a lot as it was.

“It’s unusual for a new adviser to shoot ahead.”

He said most would take up to five years to get established and make a living wage from their businesses after paying their expenses. “There is the initial set-up expense, infrastructure and compliance. The top end might be grossing $120,000 but $50,000 of that will be expenses of one description or another.”

But he said the proposed changes would make established advisers’ businesses more valuable.

“Ten years from now customers wouldn’t be able to find advisers who could help them… banks will take that over.”

He said being an insurance adviser was a unique skillset. “You can offer fantastic advice but unless you’ve got good marketing skills, you’ll have no one to advise. But if you are good at marketing and not so good at advice, you’ll have no business.”

Moore said he saw few really personality-driven advisers enter the industry now. Where once 90 per cent of advisers had been “developers” and 10 per cent “farmers”, now the situation was reversed.

“New advisers are mostly cutting their teeth in a bank or as an apprentice to someone else.”

Those who did not want to remain an employee were getting the money together to buy an advice business, he said. But any changes to remuneration structures would make that impossible.