IOOF has lifted its stake in dealer group Financial Partnership to 100 per cent as part of an ongoing effort to strengthen its retail distribution capacity.
“It’s a good deal for IOOF as it will create a powerful market leading dealer group,” IOOF general manager, retail funds management, Jarrod Brown said.
IOOF had previously owned 25 per cent of Financial Partnership and will use a combination of cash and the issue of IOOF shares as consideration to purchase the remaining 75 per cent equity share of the advisory practice.
“For Financial Partnership advisers it leverages off the new Winchcombe Carson model and [provides] significantly greater resources than they access today. For Winchcombe, the deal provides more scale,” Brown said.
The acquisition raises the number of advisers in the IOOF network to 120 and means the organisation now controls $2.3 billion in funds under administration.
The two groups will continue to trade as separate brands in the interim but will be united under a new name early in the next financial year. The amalgamation of the two planning groups will also spark additional refinements to the existing Winchcombe Carson dealership model.
Current managing director of Financial Partnership, Stuart Abley, will lead the new dealer group while Scott Monotti, who is the head of Winchcombe Carson, will be responsible for back-office operations and delivery of the value proposition under the new unified structure. Both will report directly to Brown.
IOOF is expecting the new dealer group to build upon the recent overhaul of its platform offerings to increase the company’s competitiveness in the market.
“The new platform for the first time opens up an opportunity for us in the cut down space — that is, a lower choice, lower price, simple proposition. It also opens up opportunities in the self-managed super space, so the high-end particularly, which at the moment our platform proposition doesn’t target,” Brown said.
“The platform work that we have been doing has been with a view toward our aligned distribution because we see aligned distribution and platform as being inextricably linked,” he explained.
