Australian Unity Personal Financial Services has emerged as Money Management's 2012 Institutional Dealer Group of the Year, while Dixon Advisory Services (Dixon) has been named the 2012 Non-Institutional Dealer Group of the Year.
The two dealer groups emerged as the winners of the awards as the result of a process utilising data collected via the Money Management Top 100 Dealer Group process and then weighing a range of factors including not only funds under advice, but also overall planner numbers and then the growth in planner numbers and growth in FUA.
Australian Unity Personal Financial Services (PFS) emerged as a strong winner of the Institutional award based not only on the growth in its planner numbers, but also the manner in which the overall business had grown.
Commenting on the achievement, Australian Unity PFS general manager Steve Davis attributed it to the group's status as being backed by a strong mutual institution in Australian Unity and the manner in which it had developed links to accountancy firms as referral partners.
Discussing the number of planners who had joined the group in the past 12 months, he said Australian Unity "had a good story to tell to them in terms of delivering a full service dealer group offering and attracting the attention of accountants".
However, Davis said that while Australian Unity PFS had grown its planner numbers significantly in the past 12 months it was not pursuing growth simply for growth's sake or uncapped growth.
"Once we reach around 100 practices, I believe we'll be looking for more organic growth," he said.
Dixon was rated Non-Institutional Dealer Group of 2012, based in large part on the manner in which it had been able to grow not only its planner numbers but also funds under advice over the period.
While a number of other non-institutional dealer groups such as Futuro and MyAdviser had also grown their planner numbers over the period, they could not match Dixon in terms of the other metrics utilised by Money Management to determine the winner.
Commenting on the group's success, Dixon managing director and chief operating officer Chris Brown agreed that the company had not taken a strictly conventional approach – something reflected in initiatives such as its investment in a US real estate investment trust.
"We believe in having capability in-house and we'll spend time and resources on achieving that where we see it's necessary," he said.
Looking to the future, Brown said Dixon would not necessarily be growing planners as rapidly in the next 12 months as occurred in 2011/12.
"While we're well-positioned, the next 12 months promises to be both interesting and challenging," he said.
