She said that from a pool of 20 people at her first adviser course in Wellington, only she remained active in the advice profession and she puts the blame for this attrition rate squarely at the door of insurers and adviser bodies.

"Initially commission-only is really hard so a lot of people give up, that's obvious. It takes about three to six months to get going, the leads provided from the practice managers are normally C clients, some are good but most are C/D clients and it's just a little bit too hard."

She said it's an issue insurers especially need to take seriously.

"They [insurers] need to start looking at areas like this due to the age demographic [of advisers]. I would also say that if you're going to make it as hard as you're making it, you're not going to get the quality of advisers you should," she said.

"They are going to go to corporate companies and you'll get the people that possibly can't get those jobs."

While frustrated with what she views as a lack of support, Hambly also recognised an opportunity to provide services to new advisers so established Adviser Contact Services.

She said the company would offer a number of services to new and also established advisers, including generating pre-qualified leads for new advisers and - an area she said is especially important given regulatory requirements - database management.

"How can they prove they're servicing them [clients] properly? What we're going to do is give them that proof that they have been talked to, they have been contacted, emails have been updated, addresses have been updated."

She said the charges for advisers' would vary according to the services though she revealed it would cost $20 for each pre-qualified lead as part of an overall database management pcckage.