The Commonwealth Bank has begun the integration of Colonial’s 800 financial advisers into its structure by marrying both groups’ bank-based planning operations.
The 124 advisers associated with Colonial First State’s banking operations will join the Commonwealth’s 880 bank-based planners according to Commonwealth head of advice, Steve Cullen.
The two Colonial First State planning groups, Colonial Financial Planners and Colonial Financial Advisers, will be integrated into the Commonwealth’s three-tiered financial planning structure.
Cullen says both the Commonwealth and Colonial bank-based advisers covered similar markets before the merger.
“They are similar jobs with planners working on an events basis and with the same levels of experience levels, which make it a complementary fit for both business,” Cullen says.
“As such we see the coming together of the two operations as being fairly easy as we both had the same consistent approach.”
Commonwealth distribution executive Chris Davies says both groups work off different product lists and back office systems, however from the customer point of view, the operations are the same.
“As such, the two Colonial channels match up well with their equivalents at the Commonwealth,” Davies says.
“We also expect that some of the people at Colonial will be a good fit for the more senior roles in planning at the Commonwealth.”
Davies says most of the planners from Colonial Financial Advisers will move into the Commonwealth Personal Bankers group while most of the planners from Colonial Financial Planners will join Commonwealth Investment Consultants.
Apart from the bank-based advisers, Colonial also owns the Colonial Partners and Financial Wisdom networks that operate outside the bank. Davies says these two groups will retain their present structure.
“We don’t see any change in the structure of Colonial Partners, most of them hold a proper authority through Colonial and that will remain as it is. The same applies for Financial Wisdom which was an autonomous operation under Colonial,” Davies says.
Regardless of how these groups fit into the new structure, the addition of the Colonial planners is a boost for the financial planning arm of the Commonwealth.
The merger will give the Commonwealth a total of 1580 planners, making it the second biggest owner of financial planning groups in the country behind AMP which has about 1850 planners.
Davies says the integration process will begin early next year.
