ING Australia has chosen the name Tandem as the new trademark for the consolidated financial planning business it is forming with the merger of three of its existing dealer groups — Lynx Financial Services, Partnership Planning and AustAdvisers.
The giant Dutch financial services group was planning to publicly unveil the new name this week as the culmination of a repositioning program for its dealer groups that stretches back to the beginning of this year.
ING head of equity distribution Mike Goodall revealed the new name to advisers from the three dealer groups at a series of road shows across the country last week.
The ING group was also expected this week to announce Andrew Doquile, the former national sales and marketing manager for WealthPoint, as the new general manager of the Tandem business.
Money Managementconfirmed last week that Doquile had moved across to ING from the St George Bank owned WealthPoint to take up the new position.
ING first touted the consolidation and rebranding of its dealer groups in the early part of this year, but the program was delayed after ING signed a funds management joint venture with the ANZ bank in April.
The merger of Lynx, Partnership Planning and AustAdvisers to form the new dealer group will make Tandem one of the larger financial planning businesses in the country, with some 300 advisers on its books.
However, Goodall conceded when he announced the merger of the three planning businesses in July that planner numbers could fall.
At the time, Goodall said some planners would be forced out of the consolidated dealer group for being unable to meet new competency benchmarks, while others would leave because they were uncomfortable with the merger.
Last week,Money Managementrevealed that the managing director of Lynx, Stuart Abley, walked away from the group to join IOOF.
Abley said he moved on because he was not comfortable with ING’s strategy for Lynx as part of the merged dealer group.
Tandem will sit alongside ING’s other major dealer group in Australia, RetireInvest, which was unaffected by ING’s repositioning program.
