The formermanaging director of Lynx Financial Services, Stuart Abley, has poached a number of the ING owned dealer group’s financial planners to launch a new planning dealership with the backing of IOOF Funds Management.
The launch of the new group, to be called Financial Partnership, comes two months after Abley left Lynx to join IOOF in protest over ING’s decision to merge Lynx with two of its other dealerships, Aust-Advisers and Partnership Planning.
Twelve financial planning practices have so far signed up to Financial Partnership, the majority of them headed by former Lynx financial planners. According to Abley, these include some of Lynx’s top producing advisers.
However, Abley has rejected suggestions Financial Partnership is specifically targeting Lynx advisers. The group is currently in negotiation with another dozen financial planners, none of which have any connection to Lynx.
Abley says the group’s ultimate aim is to have a maximum of 60 high-end advisers, based exclusively in Sydney and Melbourne.
“We want to stay very much a boutique style operation. One of the main drawcards of our group will be being able to provide hands on management support. Our focus is not on building scale. Our focus is on building the business of our advisers,” he says.
IOOF has taken a 25 per cent stake in Financial Partnership, which will use a customised version of IOOF’s Max master trust. However IOOF will assume a largely hands off approach to the running of the dealer.
“IOOF are leaving the operational control of the group to the people who are running it. They don’t believe they have the experience to run a dealer group. That is refreshing because a lot of big institutions think they do, but they don’t,” Abley says.
The other 75 per cent of Financial Partnership will be owned by a combination of advisers and staff, including Abley.
The former managing director of Lynx’s New South Wales office, Howard Smith, and ex-Zurich executive Joe Botte, have also taken on internal roles with Financial Partnership.
