You can see last year's predictions here.

1. Adviserland will look quite different

With March 15 looming as the start of the new financial adviser regime the composition of the financial adviser market will change.

One of the things many have not realised is how many highly experienced financial advisers have hung up their shingle. During the course of 2020 I regularly came across advisers, surprisingly mainly in the investment space who had sold their books.

This is a worry as there does not seem to be a corresponding stream of new advisers coming into the industry.

2. The FMA will go on a bear hunt

As noted many times before there have been very few cases of AFAs ending up before the Financial Disciplinary Committee - simply because they do a good job. The most recent case, covered exclusively by Good Returns, was pretty Mickey Mouse, even the head of the FADC questioned what it was all about. Just as importantly it is relevant to note none of the adviser's clients suffered any losses. 

Now the FMA regulates what will be the soon to be extinct RFA community expect it to go looking for new cases. There is no doubt it will find behaviour which is sub-standard, but will clients be in a worse off situation?

4. AMP - is this the end of the line?

There will be a lot of interest in the future of AMP. My thoughts were once US private equity firm Ares Management Corporation made an offer for AMP it would flush other potential suitors out of the market. Officially there has been no news on this, but sources suggest Fisher Funds (or its owner TSB Community Trust) continues to show interested in acquiring AMP. 

A secondary question is will AMP keep its KiwiSaver default status. I'll go out on a limb here and say no. Not even dumping its active management model and embracing passive will help it.

5. Investment markets will do what they do best
This is a repeat of last year! I'm not silly enough to make a prediction about markets. Markets will go up; markets will go down. But, while asset prices seem very high at the moment it feels like there is nothing looming to stop the momentum.