Aon mines SMEs to grow advice

AonAustralia has commenced a program to grow its two financial planning arms by leveraging off its strong presence in the small to medium enterprise (SME) market by encouraging SME account managers to refer clients to its advisers.

The initiative is part of the firm’s ongoing ‘One Aon’ philosophy, and aims to boost the Aon Wealth Management and Aon Financial Planning and Protection (FP&P) dealer groups. It will do this by taking advantage of the broader group’s existing relationships with 143,000 SMEs — the equivalent of 26 per cent of this market nationwide.

“We are starting to run seminars where our financial planners and account executives, who manage these clients, sit down together so the latter can be educated about financial planning and what it can offer clients,” managing director of Aon Wealth Management and FP&A Greg Dunger says.

According to Dunger, as the account manager already has a relationship with the client, there’s a significant opportunity for them to highlight the additional services Aon can offer.

“Some clients will have other groups already looking after them, but in instances when this isn’t the case the manager can introduce our advisers to them,” he says.

Despite those clients who already have relationships with other companies, Dunger believes given Aon’s extensive reach into the SME market, there is a good chance the program will bear fruit.

“If we targeted this group and only 5 per cent took up what we have to offer through our financial planning arms, then that would represent a 20 per cent increase in revenue to our business alone,” he says.

Under Dunger, both the group’s wealth management and planning and protection businesses recently separated their operations and distribution functions.

As part of the move, operations general manager Michel Scutts was appointed from BT Financial Group to take responsibility for compliance, education standards, paraplanning, commissions and administration, while general manager distribution and marketing Tony Lye, who founded the business 16 years ago, has responsibility for all Aon advisers.

FP&A has 194 planners while the wealth management arm, which was set up in November 2002 as part of a joint venture between Aon and Ipac (the latter holds a 20 per cent stake in the venture), has 34 planners.

Last year, Aon announced the incorporation of another dealer group — Aon Financial Adviser Services — into the wealth management and FP&A businesses, with planners given until January 1 this year to decide on which, if any, dealer firm they would transition into.