FirstChoice dominates platform market

New research finds that Colonial's FirstChoice platform is the most popular among financial advisers across all states and territories.

Rainmaker analysis of ASIC's March Financial Adviser Register reveals Colonial FirstChoice is the most-used platform nationwide.

In New South Wales and the nation's capital, Perpetual WealthFocus (6.3%) and Macquarie Wrap (6.2%) are second and third most popular platforms, respectively.

In Victoria, AMP Flexible Lifetime and Asgard are frequently used after FirstChoice with a 9.5% and 7.6% market share, respectively.

In Western Australia, IOOF and Macquarie Wrap came equal second place with a 7.7% market share.

In Queensland, Perpetual WealthFocus and AMP Flexible Lifetime comprised the top three platforms.

Rainmaker also found one platform services 2200 advisers on average based on the total population of 20,667. One adviser uses six platforms on average.

"Delving more deeply, this analysis shows that while platform rank among financial advisers generally moves in tandem with respect to its overall rank, there are nonetheless some inconsistencies. That is, a platform popular in one state may be ranked very differently in another. For example, Netwealth was Top 10 in only one state-its home state of Victoria," the report read.

Overall, FirstChoice has 9738 financial advisers using its functionalities, followed by AMP Flexible Lifetime with 5969 users.

Over the course of 12 months, GWM Adviser Services welcomed the highest number of advisers of 173 but lost 164. AMP Financial Planning lost 389 advisers but added 50 new representatives.