BankWest recruitment goes east

BankWest has launched a recruitment campaign to increase its financial adviser complement in existing and new stores on the eastern seaboard of Australia.

The campaign, which will target advisers in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, is being accompanied by the development of a new advice model to operate alongside BankWest’s existing Advice in a Box model.

The developments follow the pur chase of BankWest from British bank HBOS by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) in Octo ber last year for $2.1 billion.

BankWest head of financial advice Lisa Livis said there are “no set targets to increase our adviser numbers” beyond a current total of 55 advisers and 15 cadets, evenly spread across the west and east coasts.

“It’s rather a case [of having] some existing vacancies to fill on the east coast, and obviously we will be looking to exploit growth opportunities in that market if we see good candidates.

“We are also reviewing the optimum number of advisers for us on both the east and west coasts now that we’ve been bought by CBA, which is bringing some growth opportunities for us.”

Livis said the recruitment cam paign was partly motivated by strong support for the Advice in a Box model and partly because BankWest was “writing a lot of mortgages on the east coast”.

She said the Advice in a Box model, which was launched in June last year, has the lowest implementation fee in the market and does not charge clients a Statement of Advice fee.

The model, offering insurance, super and investments, targets the 70 per cent of Australians who currently don’t have a relationship with an adviser, often due to the prohibitive cost of advice in some models.

BankWest is also developing a “more complex advice model to satisfy an equally pleasing appetite from customers outside of the mass market space”, she said.

“We currently do offer more complex advice for anyone who asks for it, but we are currently refining our proposition for that end of the market space.”