CENTRESTONE Wealth Management has pushed on with its plans to purchase other planning practices with its first external acquisition, ProVision Financial.
ProVision, which was established by Bruce Christie in the 1980s and one of the first fee for service based planning groups in the market, has $170 million of assets under advice with seven staff, including two other planners who have all accepted positions with Centrestone.
“We consider ProVision to be one of the outstanding financial planning businesses in Australia. Bruce has operated on a fee-for-service basis since the 1980s and was a real industry pioneer in this,” Centrestone chief executive Rob Keavney says.
After eight months of operation Centrestone has $860 million in assets under advice.
ProVision founder, Christie says the business spent around nine months looking at options for a sale or merger and opted for Centrestone since it had a capital base raised from private investors.
Centrestone made its first purchase in November last year when Keith Miller, Peter Brennan and Glenese Keavney — three planners involved with Investor Security Group (ISG) — came aboard.
ISG merged with risk business P&A to create Centrestone in July last year, but the nature of the acquisition meant that in joining Centrestone the three ISG planners would take on performance-based capital stakes.
Announcing the purchase, Centrestone chair Malcolm Turnbull says it marks the second stage of the group’s development after integrating the founding groups, with Keavney saying Centrestone is in discussions with a number of other fee-based planners operating in the high-net-worth market.
The group also claims it is benefiting from the reaction to the recentAustralian Securities and Investments Commissionand Australian Consumers’ Association survey into the quality of financial advice, with a growing trend for high quality advisers to draw together in boutiques as a way of avoiding brand damage from the real or perceived poorer quality services being offered by their colleagues.
