By Michael Bailey
The breakaway dealer group of 22 RetireInvest planners from Victoria will be known as Iris Financial Group when it officially launches later this month.
Details of the breakaway emerged as RetireInvest’s owner, ING Australia, revealed that 81 of its 89 licensees had signed a new, uniform franchise agreement. Negotiations on the contract caused much consternation for the dealer group through last year.
The chief executive of Iris will be Allen Harrison, previously the Victorian state manager for RetireInvest.
Eight RetireInvest offices across Melbourne, Bairnsdale, Horsham and Malvern will shortly be rebranded under the Iris name with a new logo, both crafted by the Securitor dealer-to-dealer service which is supporting the new group.
Suggestions last week that the Albury-Wodonga branch of RetireInvest would join the breakaway were scotched by general manager George Haramis, who said the practice had merely been sold to a different adviser and would remain under the RetireInvest banner.
The chief executive officer of ING Australia, Paul Bedbrook, hoped the new single franchise agreement would reduce disaffection among RetireInvest advisers in the future.
Under the new deal, the proportion of revenues kept by a franchisee can rise from 82 per cent to 90 per cent, and it becomes much easier for a practice to take its clients along if it leaves the RetireInvest group.
“The old agreements assumed the clients would stay with us, this new one assumes the other way,” Haramis said.
The chief executive of Securitor’s parent Sealcorp, Geoff Lloyd, said the formation of Iris was “a classic example of a group of like-minded, high quality planners with high quality clients, getting disaffected with the big institutions and wanting to own their own destiny”.
