Sean Graham
The Advice Quality Index is an independent longitudinal benchmark built from one of Australia’s largest independent advice review datasets.
Most public discussions about advice quality rely on complaints, enforcement action, remediation programmes or individual cases. Those sources are important, but they principally show where advice has failed. They don’t measure how the overall quality of independently reviewed advice changes over time.
The Advice Quality Index establishes an independent longitudinal benchmark for measuring how advice quality changes over time.
It applies a consistent assessment methodology to independently reviewed financial advice and measures how the distribution of quality ratings changed over six financial years. The inaugural Index is based on 9,315 reviewed files from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2026 and is informed by Assured Support’s broader dataset of more than 24,614 advice files across more than 200 Australian licensees.
In a complex and frequently changing regulatory environment, independently reviewed advice became substantially more reliable. Poor and Very Poor ratings halved, while Sound advice increased to 88.2%, establishing the necessary foundation for Good and Exceptional advice.
The findings tell a clear story:
- advice assessed as Poor or Very Poor fell from 20.9% to 10.0%
- sound advice increased from 77.0% to 88.2%, and
- independently reviewed advice became more consistent despite sustained regulatory and professional change.
For licensees, boards, Responsible Managers and advisers, the Index provides an evidence-based benchmark for understanding where advice quality is improving, where further capability development is required and how review outcomes should be interpreted over time.