Advance reaffirms market commitment

Advance Funds Managementis seeking to enhance its market presence with the St George Bank-owned asset manager announcing a brand re-launch and plans to bolster relationships with financial planners, which account for 95 per cent of inflows.

The move, which will see the group branded simply as ‘Advance’, is to clarify the investment manager’s business strategy as a manager of managers, says Advance managing director, Kate Mulligan.

Mulligan says it is also in talks with a number of adviser networks regarding the badging of various Advance products and is aiming to increase its representation in the wholesale market too, by having a greater number of its funds listed on various platforms.

Mulligan says it now has 12,000 open adviser accounts - up from 10,000 since her appointment back in April.

“95 per cent of our business comes through advisers and we want to show our strong commitment to them,” Mulligan says.

Interestingly at a time of increasing fund flows into platforms, which recently led one fund manager to assert that “retail is dead”, Advance still manages to source 45 to 50 per cent of its inflows through retail funds.

“The typical experience of the industry is for 75 per cent of business to come through platforms and 25 per cent through retail funds,” Mulligan says.

Advance also announced this week that its funds under management had risen to $3.5 billion on behalf of some 100,000 plus investors.

Advance has a number of asset manager alliances, with the likes ofMaple-Brown Abbott,Schroder Investment Management Australia, Jenkins Investment Management, Goldman SachsJBWere Investment ManagementandMorgan Stanley Investment Management.