She spoke at the National Advisers Conference in Rotorua, where she announced that John Bolton, Cecilia Farrow and Stephen O’Connor had taken the advice practitioner spots on the board, and former IFA chief executive and president Bruce Cortesi and Michael Dowling had stepped down.

Brown said the new advice organisation had been designed carefully by its founding bodies and the board was focused on serving members. It was no longer a system of individual regional committees and branches feeding up to a board, she said, but an organisation designed as a whole.

The 1670 members on the association’s opening day was a number the board was very pleased with, she said.

Now, nearly 91 per cent of the members of the three founding associations had joined.

“It means they’ve seen the future that’s going to be brighter and better for all financial advisers and New Zealand,” she said.

Brown did not give a breakdown of which association Financial Advice NZ members had come from. “We are all in this together.”

But she said there was a mix of RFAs and AFAs across different advice sectors. More work was needed to ensure financial advice as an industry looked more like New Zealand, she said, with more diversity.

Brown said the association’s focus was clearly on standards, advocacy and promotion.

The Quality Service Mark system will come into effect early next year, and the association will also offer pro bono advice to foster children who want to join KiwiSaver. It is also participating in an international financial advice survey that would allow benchmarking and collaboration on data to provide advice businesses with new tools, she said.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” she said. “This is just the start.”

Brown thanked Cortesi and Dowling for their commitment to the establishment of the association.