Examining the Legitimacy of the Current ‘Authorised Representative’ Licensing Model

Legitimacy of licensing individual financial advisers through third party licensees is currently debated by the media and in practice, with unsubstantiated claims evident in the majority of commentaries. A sticking point is the lack of a theoretical framework within financial planning theory to obtain substantiated evidence. We rectify this by applying Suchman’s legitimacy theoretical framework to the current authorised representative licensing model to collect validated evidence in future empirical research. This not only advances financial planning theory, but raises further questions for future empirical research, which should provide policymakers data required to make evidence-based decisions around licensing advisers.