Boutique planning practices join forces
The planning practice of former Financial Planning Association (FPA) board member Laura Menschik has joined forces with two other boutiques to set up a new business combining financial advice and accounting.
Menschik’s Millennium Financial Services will merge with Walker Laanemaa Chartered Accountants and Danebury Financial Group to form the WLM Financial Group in May.
The new business will comprise two main divisions: WLM Financial Services, offering financial advice, and WLM Partners, offering a chartered accountancy service.
A specialist division will also be established within WLM Financial Services to service self-managed superannuation funds (SMSF), according to Menschik.
WLM Financial Group will “focus on wealth and lifestyle management”, Menschik said, offering an “extended range of services, including tax, audit, financial planning, investment, insurance, and superannuation”.
The merger is partially motivated by a “desire of all four partners to remain operating as an independently owned boutique financial services firm”, she said.
“All four of the partners have resisted friendly attempts from larger organisations to swallow us up down the years,” Menschik said.
The partners have a long association, having operated out of the same building in Sydney’s central business district for some time.
Menschik also worked with Geoff Walker, the founder of Walker Laanemaa, at accounting giant Ernst & Young more than 15 years ago. David Laanemaa joined Walker as a partner in the group in 1994.
Danebury principal Matthew Walker has worked with Menschik over a number of years through the financial services licence of Millennium.
Menschik said WLM’s partners have “anticipated the challenges that financial services organisations face, especially with compliance, regulatory regimes and the demand for self-managed super fund specialists”.
She would not comment on what level of funds under management the new group would start out with or what growth targets had been set for the first year of operation.
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