Financial planning firm Financial Services Partners has begun the new year by flagging acquisition negotiations, upcoming changes to its risk product range and two new appointments.
The appointments are those of Peter Fysh, who until last Friday was a development manager withRetireInvest, as regional manager for NSW, and Howard Horder, most recently with the Silvalake Group, as the new regional manager for Queensland. Both Fysh and Horder will step into their roles before the end of this month.
And while the group is continuing with its growth plans, chief executive Geoff Rimmer says the acquisition strategy is different in 2004.
Originally the group planned to pick up practices that were yet to transition into the new licensing regime, however Rimmer says at the time “we were thinking a little predatory”.
“We’ve shifted our strategy of acquisitions away from those who aren’t going to make it, to those who have already transitioned but see themselves at cross roads and may want more scale.”
Rimmer says the group wants to seek better value, as opposed to “paying a lot of money to get the top ten per cent of a group and then discarding the tail”.
According to Rimmer discussions are currently being held with two other groups, who are slightly smaller than Financial Services Partners, which currently has just under 200 planners.
“For us, as well as the industry as a whole, scale is still going to be one of the biggest challenges for 2004 – a bit of a holy grail,” Rimmer says.
Through its partnership with the FSP Group, FSP will also be introducing further products to its risk product range in the second half of February.
Rimmer says the main addition will be one income protection policy as a result of thePrefSure/Lumleyacquisition, which the FSP group has put onto its risk insurance menu and will “give us a lot of negotiating power for our clients”.
The group will also be announcing a new platform provider and software provider over the coming weeks.
