The Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) has introduced a “highly commended” category in its Adviser of the Year awards.

This year six advisers have been named as finalists and three have been added to the new category.

The finalists are Chris Browne from Financial Design for Life; Jason Churchill of CCS Insurance Solutions; Jonathan Hoyle with Stanford Brown; Peter Nonnenmacher of Macarthur Financial Planning; Steve Salvia from Southern Financial Strategies and Nicholas Sinclair of Wealthfarm Financial Planners.

The highly commended advisers are Marc Bineham from Noall & Co; Gerard Lowe of Lowe Financial Group and Paul Rawson from Finance Control.

AFA CEO Richard Klipin says picking the finalists this year was hard, so the judges introduced the new highly commended category to “formally recognise the outstanding talent of those advisers who came within a hair’s breadth of making the final round”.

The winner will be announced at the AFA National Conference on the Gold Coast on October 26.