Many are planning to take licenses under the new financial advice regime, and to allow their members to operate within them.

This would reduce the advisers’ compliance burden but increases the groups’ responsibility for those advisers.

Not all groups are planning to accept all their existing members under their new licenses.

Transitional licensing is set to start later this year, and full licensing two years later.

Josh Bronkhorst, managing director of Mortgage Link and Insurance Link, said most of the advisers he talked to had made a lot of changes and moved closer to where they would need to be under the new regime.

But he said some still had not done enough.

He said his group was fortunate in that it had been contained in terms of adviser numbers.

"I'm pretty confident we'll take 99% [of existing members] into our licence. In saying that, I know there's still a little bit of water to go under the bridge."

He said members were told at roadshows last year that those who did not tick the required boxes would not be able to operate under the group licence.

"It's definitely not an automatic thing that you're part of the group so we'll take you into the licence."

Advisers would need to be using the right systems and processes and would have to be able to allow regular auditing.

"There may be some advisers who find themselves in a bit of a dilemma," he said.

“Every group that takes on a licence will have to have pretty strict criteria for advisers to be part of that licence… if they don’t tick the boxes necessary to become part of the group licence, what do they do? It’s unlikely they will tick the boxed for their own licence.”

At Share, Tony Dench (picutred) said all advisers in the group would be able to work under the Share licence. “There are people asking to join Share regularly but it’s about finding the right fit. We’re quite selective on how we go about hat and deliberately so.”