AMP claims planners little affected by merger

AMP Limited has acknowledged the possibility it may lose some planners as it presses ahead with its merger with AXA, but has made clear most advisers will not even notice because it will be maintaining the existing branding and multi-advice branding.

In a briefing provided to industry journalists, AMP chief executive Craig Dunn (pictured) together with AMP Financial Services managing director Craig Meller said that life for planners in both groups would be very much business as usual.

“Ninety-eight per cent of our team will be doing what they’ve always done,” Meller said.

Dunn said a key immediate focus would be identifying and retaining the best talent from the two mergers.

However he confirmed that the merger would result in some job losses where duplication was found to exist between the two organisations.

So far as was possible, the company would look to achieve its objectives via natural attrition and voluntary redundancies.

Both Dunn and Meller said the only branding issues with respect to financial planning would occur when AMP’s entitlement to continue using the AXA brand expired in two years’ time – something that would affect AXA Financial Planning.

However they said consultations would be held with those working in the AXA Financial Planning area to determine what they wanted to do with respect to future branding.