AMP have dollars invested as minority interest in advice...

AMP have dollars invested as minority interest in advice businesses but other than this they are not in the advice business. AMP is in the licensee business.

While the proposed changes may reduce the cost to serve in an adviser office, this will not benefit AMP, other then through its shareholding in practices. The profit from this area is not that material. I would guess about $10m or so. AMP sold the only advice business that it owned outright 2 years ago - the old ipac business as it was losing money.

It is hard for a licensee to make money just from being a licensee. And amp has proved to be poor at running a licensee over recent years, both in terms of cost to run - at its heart amp is a bureaucratic operator - and in terms of retaining or attracting advisers. Licensees need to be lean and mean and to have solid relationships with their advisers. AMP are so far from this - years of legal fighting with their advisers over bolr and huge amounts thrown at IT systems for advisers that produced no benefit.

I believe amp will take advantage of the new limited advice rules to front end product sales. Probably after spending a few hundred million on IT systems to support it.

The problem they face is who will want to buy a licensee losing tens of millions? Gone are the days of banks throwing dollars at this just to buy distribution for WM products so they can be in broader based financial services.