Margin squeeze forced Suncorp out of aligned advice
Economic headwinds such as the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms, and the squeeze of margins led Suncorp Life to the belief that aligned businesses was not core to their business, which led them to closing Guardian Advice in November last year.
Asteron Life head of wealth and life intermediaries, Mark Vilo, said the upcoming life insurance framework (LIF) would also have a similar impact on businesses while the ability to grow scale and manage compliance through aligned businesses was increasingly challenging.
Speaking at the Association of Financial Advisers' (AFA) 2016 National Adviser Conference opening ceremony on Wednesday, Vilo said the firm had retained a small Suncorp financial planning business mostly based in Queensland, whose role would be to focus on customers of Suncorp bank clients.
"From an Asteron Life point of view what that allows us to do is to get focused on IFA and to continue to build great and affordable products and services for IFAs so that's really where our focus is from here on," Vilo said.
Vilo predicted an omni-channel advice service going forward with customers seeking advice through digital channels, shop fronts, aggregators, or advisers.
"[It] is really the opportunity that if the organisations can get their head around that I think we will see some massive benefits from that," he said.
The closure of the advice business led to 230 job losses by May this year, Vilo said.
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