Bendigo Investment Services (BIS) has restructured its financial planning division by abandoning the traditional adviser reporting lines through state managers in favour of geographically based advice ‘clusters’ headed by senior group planners.
The changes follow a revamp of BIS’ advice remuneration structure at the beginning of the year, which saw the fully owned subsidiary of the Bendigo Bank make the unprecedented move to incorporate non-financial factors into adviser remuneration packages. These included factors such as community impact and customer satisfaction levels.
As part of the latest development, BIS has created eight advice clusters — six in Victoria and two in Queensland — with a senior planner in each responsible for mentoring individual advisers.
BIS director and chief general manager strategy and solutions for Bendigo Bank, Mike Hirst, said the bank is looking to sign-up 10 new planners in coming months and boost its overall adviser numbers to 50.
“We are a branch-based planning network and the restructure more closely ties in the planners to better align to this and the regional structures that run these networks.
As for the recently adopted remuneration structure, Hirst said early indications were that advisers were happy with the new model.
