The Financial Index Wealth Accountants (FIWA) planning group will drop its name and adopt that of acquired group Centric Wealth, according to FIWA chief executive, Spiro Paule.
The group would also move a number of regional practices which operate under the Crowe Horwath licence under the same branding following a review of the group’s brands.
Paule said FIWA was keen to retain its headline brands as it was important they maintained a presence in their respective markets and the Financial Index (Findex) brand would continue as the holding company for the licences held by the group — Crowe Horwath, Centric/FIWA, Prescott Securities and robo-advice provider Movo.
According to Paule there was no intention at present to change the branding of Crowe Horwath with the immediate focus being on assessing how many accountants within that group were interested in moving into financial planning and attaining the necessary licensing to do so.
“We have 2000 accountants in that group and we have enough capacity and expertise to licence them and during the next year we will target those already working in the self-managed superannuation space,” Paule said.
“We expect it to be a large number who will seek licensing — possibly several hundred — but we can’t be more specific until we have begun to work through the process.”
Findex also announced the acquisition of Melbourne based Martin Goodrich & Associates (MGA) and Goodrich Financial Services, which will move to the the Crowe Horwath Melbourne offices but retain their branding and during a transition phase.
MGA and Goodrich Financial Services are a private client accounting and wealth advisory firm operating in Melbourne for over 25 years and Paule said its’ client offering aligned with Findex in both its scope and that it was offered via a non-aligned advisory model.
“Both entities are committed to a holistic financial services offering in the mode of a one-stop-shop for financial services and related advice, also known as a Family Office approach.
“MGA have been one of the pioneers in offering a complete Family Office service to mainstream clients, rather than just the very wealthy, focusing on SMEs, private clients and family-owned businesses”.
Paule said the wider group, and particularly Crowe Horwath, would look at developing a lower cost model for clients interested in family offices stating it was an area not being serviced by other accounting groups or bank owned advice groups.
He said that Crowe Horwath had sufficient reach via its accounting services into the small to medium business market to offer the service which would be a leading project for the next six months.
“We have all the skills in our group to do this and as parts of accounting are marginalised we need to add services and satisfy client needs going forward and we see the family office – financial planning with accounting as the hub – as our headline strategy.”
