Chifley Financial Services has struck a joint venture deal with Manchester
Unity to provide financial planning services to Manchester’s 50,000 members.
Under the terms of the deal, Chifley will initially appoint two financial planners to sit inside Manchester Unity’s Sydney offices and provide financial planning education initiatives to Manchester’s members spread throughout New South Wales. Chifley will offer Manchester’s clients its range of superannuation and retirement planning services while Chifley planners will distribute Manchester’s range of health insurance products.
Chifley managing director Fergus Nielson described the deal as “a complementary fit” for both Chifley and Manchester.
“It allows us to expand the reach of our financial planning services and broadens our product range to include Manchester Unity’s health insurance,” he says.
Neilson says Manchester’s clients are evenly spread across all age demographics.
He says the deal will also reinforce Chifley’s strategy of broadening its distribution base by working alongside “intermediary institutions”.
Some of these “intermediary institutions” include financial planning groups Monitor Money and Forsythe. Chifley has established relationships with these groups to service clients using Chifley services in regional areas where Chifley has no financial planners on the ground.
Chifley sources its clients from relationships it has established with a diverse number of institutions including unions, superannuation funds and other groups such as the Aboriginal Land Council. It has established its union links partly through its 50 per cent ownership by the Labor Council of NSW but mostly through establishing high level contacts with union representatives.
Head of Financial Planning Peter Dawson says the relationships the group has estblished with various unions has put them in an advantageous position when it comes to advising on redundancies.
“Full endorsement by a union can carry a lot of weight with employees,” he says.
